The Securities and Exchange Commission is making extensive changes in the auditing and accounting fields as it continues to deregulate and shows greater openness to cryptocurrency investing in the Trump administration.
One of the most far-reaching moves could be requiring public companies to
"President Trump initially called for an end to quarterly reporting in a social media post in 2018, and the SEC followed up with a request for comment, but unfortunately nothing materialized at the time," he said. "In September 2025, the President again called for a reconsideration of mandatory quarterly reporting. This time, however, I expect things will be different. Chairman Atkins has asked us to prioritize this proposal. It's time to leave the airport at last and travel forward with a formal rulemaking. As we prepare recommendations for the Commission, we will be considering what other rule changes may be needed to ensure any transition to a semi-annual reporting process will be smooth and free from any regulatory turbulence."
However, Moloney acknowledged that many companies and investors would still prefer quarterly reporting.
"Like selecting the perfect travel snack once in the air, there's no one-size-fits-all solution," he said. "For some companies and their investors, semi-annual reporting may make sense. Other companies, however, may have reasons why quarterly reporting still works best for them. We want to hear a broad range of market participants' thoughts on the best way to structure the final rule before making the Division's ultimate recommendation to the Commission."
Atkins and the Commission have already acted on an overhaul of the PCAOB,
Atkins and SEC chief accountant Kurt Hohl
"It is not often that you see the industry and all various interested parties agreeing that those moves are a bad idea," said Laura Posner, a partner at Cohen Milstein's Securities and Investor Protection practice. "I think there is real merit to ensuring that the PCAOB conducts audits, that it has independence, that it is reviewing the independence of auditors. And I think even the industry recognizes that, even if they disagree with the specifics of how audits have proceeded in the past, and they want perhaps some clarity or specificity, or more definitive answers at the end of a given audit. But my understanding is even the industry thinks that there is real value in having an independent PCAOB conduct these types of reviews, and that's not surprising to me. I don't think the auditing industry wants a replay of what led up to the creation of the PCAOB back when we were dealing with WorldCom and Enron and the destruction of Arthur Andersen. I think they've recognized that the changes that have been made have been largely really beneficial and helpful in ensuring that not only the auditors but the issuers are acting more appropriately."
Since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the establishment of the PCAOB, she noted there are fewer financial restatements now by companies. "When there are restatements, they are typically much smaller on average than they used to be," Posner added. "The success of these changes has been borne out by the evidence. All the participants don't see any reason to go back to the laissez faire world in which we were all operating that led to those huge scandals."
Posner has led several shareholder and auditor class-action lawsuits, including a $1 billion lawsuit against Wells Fargo, a $400 million lawsuit against KPMG, and a
"We just settled, at least preliminarily, litigation against Deloitte for its audits of SCANA, which was a big electricity company in South Carolina," said Posner in an interview last month. "It was one of the largest frauds ever in South Carolina history, and we just resolved that case. There were a number of these issues that actually kind of came up. The conflict of interest rules were really interesting to look at, specifically with regard to what we alleged there. We had a situation where Deloitte made up all of the executives of SCANA, who were former Deloitte people. It had been SCANA's auditor for I think 70 years. On top of that, Deloitte had been auditing SCANA, but also had been auditing or doing consulting work for all of the various entities that were involved in this humongous project, and we allege that they knew information from those audits and that consulting work that were relevant to their audits here. It plays into my thinking about the conflict of interest rules and what they should look like and why they matter."
She believes it's important for the SEC to continue to enforce rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest between clients and auditors.
"That is clearly a 360 from what was being contemplated during the last administration," said Posner. "If anything, the conflict of interest rules need to be strengthened, not watered down. And I think that's particularly true given the proliferation and expansion of the consulting arms, for lack of a better word, of all of these Big Four accounting firms. There are real considerations that should be put into place beyond those dealing with conflicts of interest, for example, situations in which you have a given auditor not only auditing the company, the issuer that is the subject of the audit, but also doing consulting work or other audit type work for related entities that impact that issuer, and I really think that is an area that has not been explored nearly enough, and would have real material impacts on the quality of the audits that are conducted."
Another major change could be a move back toward the effort to converge accounting standards and have PCAOB and the Financial Accounting Standards Board work together more closely on developing accounting standards, At the AICPA conference, Atkins and Hohl expressed their openness to leveraging the International Standards on Auditing from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board as well as International Financial Reporting Standards from the International Accounting Standards Board as a way to reduce costs and complexity.
Eelco van der Enden, CEO of Accountancy Europe, a Brussels-based association representing around 1 million accountants, auditors and advisers in 35 countries, sees value in having U.S., international and European standard-setters work more closely together.
"Let realism prevail if by far the biggest capital market in the world and their representatives have some ideas and say something, you should take good notice," he told Accounting Today in an interview Friday. "Let there be no mistake on that one. When it comes to closer cooperation and a global baseline for corporate reporting. I'm very much in favor. The more we have this single version of the truth, the less deviations in reporting standards, the easier it will be for businesses to comply with that lower cost of compliance, and that will give a visible value-add for investors and other stakeholders, because they can easily compare. That, by itself, I think is a good idea."
