The Latest

Penthouse International Inc. has settled charges of accounting fraud and financial reporting violations, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced last week.Former Penthouse executive Charles Samel and former shareholder Jason Galanis will both pay $60,000 to settle accounting fraud charges and be barred for five years from serving as officers or directors of any public company, although neither man admitted or denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

On the heels of announcing its bid to combine with Reuters Group, Thomson Corp. said that its education unit’s assets will sell for $7.75 billion in cash.

Staffing provider AccountAbilities Inc. announced that it has entered into a letter of intent with Lexit Technologies Inc. for Accountabilities shareholders to receive approximately 98 percent of all common shares of Lexit, in exchange for the sale to Lexit of substantially all of the assets of AccountAbilities.

Like many of you who were once college freshman, I can vividly recall my first formalized session of “orientation,” those mandated get-togethers where a group of impressionable 17-and 18-year-olds receive a veritable laundry list from upperclassman and administrators of the do’s and don’ts in academe.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is set to act more formally on efforts to make the United States an easier place to do business, according to published reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Chief Accountant announced the selection of three academic accounting fellows, who will serve one-year terms beginning this summer.

Prabhat Goyal, the former chief financial officer of software manufacturer McAfee Inc., was convicted on 15 counts of securities fraud last week.

Crowe Chizek and Co. LLC announced that it intends to combine practices with New Jersey-based Enterprise Financial Consulting Group LLC.

Sage Software’s U.K.-based parent company, the Sage Group, reported revenues of $1.12 billion for its half-year, which ended March 31, an increase of 34 percent over the same period a year ago.

The Internal Revenue Service has identified a significant refund scheme involving hundreds of people living in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.According to the agency, many nonresidents and locals of the islands filed income tax returns requesting refund checks including the earned income tax credit. But CNMI residents are not required to file a return with the IRS and are not eligible to claim the credit.