The Latest

As expected, KPMG flung some mud of its own back at home mortgage giant Fannie Mae last week, accusing the government-subsidized company of breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation -- claiming that the problems leading to Fannie Mae’s $6.3 billion restatement were largely of the mortgage lender’s own making.

Eide Bailly LLP, North Dakota’s largest accounting firm, announced that it will merge with Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Henry Scholten & Co. LLP.

KPMG says that a lack of controls and ineffective oversight are to blame for the problems that have haunted San Diego’s financial statements.

A new survey from Deloitte says that there is a strong relationship between work-life balance and positive ethical behaviors at work.

As expected, H&R Block Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement to sell its struggling Option One Mortgage Corp. lending arm, though unit subsidiary H&R Block Mortgage Corp. is not part of the deal.

Former Qwest Communications chief executive Joseph Nacchio was found guilty last week on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading.

As an aspiring writer, my mother was once approached by a huckster-in-training in her Brooklyn neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay, who assured the-then impressionable 10-year old he could get her an “almost new” typewriter for the grand total of two cents.

The Senate Finance Committee didn’t get the answers it was hoping for during a hearing this week with Treasury Department representatives on how to reduce the tax gap.In testimony before the committee, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that Congress should focus its efforts on reducing the complexity of the tax code, as well as approving the entire budget request from the Internal Revenue Service and enacting the Treasury’s February legislative proposals that are backed by President Bush. Paulson said that in developing more than a dozen proposals to minimize the gap, the Treasury focused on changes that would come with minimal additional burdens.

The oversight body for the International Accounting Standards Board said that Olivier Servais will serve as team leader for the organization’s Extensible Business Reporting Language initiative.

Garden City, N.Y.-based Israeloff, Trattner & Co. CPAs PC has merged with its Long Island neighbor, Hempstead, N.Y.-based accounting and tax firm Bloom & Co. LLP.