Audit & Accounting

SEC Chief Accountant Jim Kroeker said the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board should proceed with their efforts to converge U.S. and international accounting standards, even though the SEC commissioners have not yet formally approved the proposed roadmap to International Financial Reporting Standards.

IMGCAP(1)]The creation of a super agency to regulate banks is a beguilinglysimple idea. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the SenateBanking Committee, recently sent up a trial balloon, giving the ideanew life.

The International Accounting Standards Board and its U.S. counterpart, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, plan to meet on a monthly basis in order to achieve the goal of converging accounting standards by June 2011.

Seventy-one percent of U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers surveyed by Grant Thornton believe that the Financial Accounting Standards Board should set U.S. accounting standards, instead of the International Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission or Congress.

Forty percent of U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers polled by Grant Thornton said they do not believe U.S. companies should be required to use International Financial Reporting Standards.

Despite growth in its Asia-Pacific region, as well as in its consulting unit, wobbly economic conditions both domestic and abroad resulted in Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu reporting a 4.9 percent decline in fiscal 2009 global revenues in U.S. dollars, to $26.1 billion, and just 1 percent growth in local currency terms.

The Private Company Financial Reporting Committee met to discuss the impact of recent changes in accounting standards on private companies, including some confusion in the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s new Codification updates.

Worried that corporate auditors are being duped by widespread related-party transaction frauds, officials at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are considering new standards establishing stiffer and more specific requirements for accountants who encounter these arrangements.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has published a consultation paper seeking views on a new assurance standard it is developing for greenhouse gas emission reporting.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has established a Not-for-Profit Advisory Committee to offer input to the board on guidance, current and future technical projects, and longer-term issues affecting nonprofits.