Audit & Accounting

LeMaster Daniels has acquired Abramson Pendergast & Co., another CPA firm based in Washington State.

Deloitte's office in the Netherlands is preparing for a lawsuit by a group of investors there over its audits of food distributor Royal Ahold in a case that could cost the firm hundreds of millions of euros.

AccountantsWorld has teamed up with ExpertPlan to help accountants provide retirement-planning services to clients.

CPA firm Habif, Arogeti & Wynne has acquired another Atlanta-based accounting firm, Miller Ray Houser & Stewart, in a multimillion-dollar deal.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plans to explain the deficiencies it found in its recent inspections of smaller auditing firms during an upcoming webcast.

WebCPA presents a free online session discussing various facets of philanthropy and its potential benefits for accountants.

Auditors at some of the largest accounting firms are working on tougher standards for valuing the assets of banks in an effort to calm jittery investors.

It began in college, continued in law school, and still exists today, my fascination with court and disciplinary opinions that provide an inside view of something the involved parties would rather had never come to light. The most recent one is a PCAOB disciplinary order involving an accountant who worked for KPMG.

CVS CAREMARK DISMISSES KPMGCVS Caremark Corp., a prescription drug provider, has jettisoned Big Four firm KPMG as its independent accountant and named Ernst & Young as its successor.

Our column in the previous issue considered the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently appointed Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting, which has been charged with finding ways to strengthen the system. As our readers might expect, we found flaws among the premises in a discussion paper by the chair, Robert Pozen (available at www.sec.gov/about/offices/oca/acifr/acifr_discussion.htm).In this column, we look at the first five of 10 specific points in Pozen’s paper that deserve exposure and that will demand additional attention from the committee. Our next column will address the remaining five.