Audit & Accounting

Structured products are wending their way into portfolios, with investors recently sucking up half a billion dollars on just three new issues of the vehicles - three of some 67 offerings of structured products launched this year.

* N.J. ATTORNEY GENERAL BUSTS AMEX FINANCIAL ADVISORS: American Express Financial Advisors Inc. will pay New Jersey $5 million and implement company-wide reforms to address allegations that it failed to reasonably supervise its financial advisors.

Ask any reputable financial planner how to secure a decent retirement, and you might just get a laundry list of what you should or should not do. Most represent pretty good thoughts.

PricewaterhouseCoopers plans to fight a $120 million jury award to creditors of defunct Ambassador Insurance Co.

A sixteenth former Enron executive has pleaded guilty in the Justice Department's investigation into the energy giant's bankruptcy.

California Rep. Christopher Cox, President Bush's nominee for chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, disclosed his stock, mutual fund and other assets in early July, the value of which could range from $2.7 million to $5.9 million.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board have issued an exposure draft of a proposed new standard on business combinations. If approved, the standard should help facilitate global consistency in accounting for transnational mergers and acquisitions.

In a memo to federal regulators, lawyers for American International Group Inc.'s former chief executive outlined a case that the company's $3.9 billion earnings restatement was unnecessary and that any blame lay with its auditor of the past two decades, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Time Warner Inc. will set aside $3 billion in reserves for shareholder lawsuits over the AOL merger, and in a separate announcement, plaintiff lawyers said that accounting firm Ernst & Young, the company's auditor, has agreed to contribute another $100 million.

The Financial Reporting Review Panel, one of Britain's audit watchdogs, released its first report into the United Kingdom's accounting principles, saying it found "no evidence of systemic weakness."