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The International Accounting Standards Board has issued educational guidance from an expert advisory panel on the controversial issue of fair value measurement when markets become inactive.

Despite the financial crisis that has engulfed both Wall Street and Main Street, the demand for skilled accountants during tax season remains as strong as ever."Firms continue to hire skilled accountants and they continue to be in short supply," explained Jon Zion, president of eastern U.S. operations for Robert Half Finance & Accounting. "The unemployment rate for highly skilled finance and accounting professionals is 2.5 percent, while the overall unemployment rate is over 6 percent."

Barry Salzberg became CEO of Deloitte LLP in June of 2007, after serving for four years as U.S. managing partner, and has steered the Big Four firm toward increased revenues, while launching a number of new initiatives in the firm's practice areas and culture, including its much-heralded plan to build a large learning and development facility in Texas.Accounting Today sat down with Salzberg a little after his first anniversary as CEO to discuss Deloitte University, "green" consulting, mass career customization and more.

Fees and partner income grew at CPA firms last year, but the declining economy is likely to take a toll this year, according to the annual Rosenberg MAP Survey.Compiled by consultancy Rosenberg Associates, the study found that firms with annual net fees of over $2 million experienced 10.8 percent growth in those fees last year, but that was down slightly from 11.4 percent growth in 2006. Average income per partner at these firms was $369,000, up from $350,000 in 2006.

Is the United States government fiscally sustainable? It's a good question that begs others.Will projected revenues balance liabilities? How does debt figure in? How much will Social Security and Medicare cost? How much will interest on Treasury bills add up to?

The European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, which consults to the International Accounting Standards Board in London on standard-setting, and is perceived as the European counterpart to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (although without the U.S. organization's standard-setting authority), said that it plans to triple its annual operating budget by 2010, to $9 million.A European Commission official told Accounting Today that the increase would elevate EFRAG to approximately the same level that FASB devotes to similar consulting activity on standards.

PWC TO SETTLE AIG SUIT FOR $97.5 MILLIONColumbus, Ohio - PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to pay $97.5 million as a partial settlement of a securities class-action lawsuit over the firm's audits of AIG, the insurance giant taken over in September by the federal government.

In high school, our varsity football coach would routinely present opponents' game films to the math department, who would calculate probabilities on the types of plays that the teams would run in certain situations. In one game, the plan backfired like a baked potato wedged in an exhaust pipe as we found ourselves on the short end of a four-touchdown shellacking - on Homecoming Weekend. When asked afterwards what went wrong, the coach shrugged sheepishly, and replied, "On paper it looked like it would work."Fast forward to last month, when the Treasury's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession approved and adopted a final report with a series of cogent recommendations on how to improve the sustainability of the audit profession.

The unanimous vote by the Securities and Exchange Commission to propose a "roadmap" for convergence towards the use of International Financial Reporting Standards by U.S. companies is a positive first step.The eventual use of global, country-neutral financial reporting standards for U.S. public companies will be superior in quality to both current U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and IFRS.