COSO ISSUES GUIDANCEAltamonte Springs, Fla. - The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission and Grant Thornton have collaborated on Guidance on Monitoring Internal Control Systems to help companies comply better with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for auditing internal controls.
The guidance focuses on helping companies improve their monitoring of internal control, and use monitoring to make the internal control process more efficient, as well as effective, and to consider the balance of efficiency and effectiveness holistically, including the level of work performed by management and internal audit, and the degree to which the external auditors can rely on that work.
The introduction can be downloaded for free from COSO's Web site at www.coso.org.
The guidance is available both in electronic and hard copy formats and can be purchased at www.cpa2biz.com.
NEW BOARD TO MONITOR IASB
London - A new board that includes the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory bodies will now oversee the trustees who oversee the International Accounting Standards Board.
The Trustees of the International Accounting Standards Committee, the oversight body of the IASB, announced the change to its constitution in early February. The monitoring board will make the international standard-setter more accountable to government regulators, but the IASB will still maintain autonomy.
The monitoring board includes representatives from the SEC, the European Commission, the Japan Financial Services Agency, and the Emerging Markets and Technical Committees of the International Organization of Securities Commissions. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision will be a formal observer.
The IASC trustees also announced that they were expanding the size of the IASB from 14 board members to 16 by 2012, with criteria added to ensure geographic diversity. In contrast, FASB reduced the size of its board from seven to five last year.
The new members of the IASB will include four from Asia/Oceania, four from Europe, four from North America, one from Africa, one from South America, and two from any area, subject to maintaining overall geographical balance.
