Audit & Accounting

Ray Schmidt, chief information officer of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, is stepping down after five years to take a job in the private sector.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun distributing $267 million to about 200,000 investors from the fund it set up as part of its settlement with Qwest Communications over allegations of accounting fraud.

The International Federation of Accountants is internationalizing its Web site and turning it into a veritable United Nations by translating key parts of it into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.

A Securities and Exchange Commission advisory committee began meeting to consider ways to make financial reporting more understandable and relevant to investors.

Two CPA firms on California's central coast have announced a merger: Bianchi, Lorincz, Huey, Hudson & Co. and Kasavan & Pope.

General Electric vice president and comptroller Phillip Ameen has joined the advisory board of BNA Tax and Accounting's Accounting Policy & Practice Series.

Grant Thornton CEO Edward E. Nusbaum has worked with the firm for 28 years, but since he took over the helm, the Chicago-based firm has more than doubled its revenue in the last four years, reaching $940 million in 2006.

This week marks the five-year anniversary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The legislation has proven to be a boon to many accountants and auditing firms, but a bane to many public companies.

Motive has dropped Ernst & Young as its independent auditing firm after its audit committee conducted an investigation into its own past accounting practices, helped by a law firm that hired PricewaterhouseCoopers.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox says small public companies should start getting ready to comply with the stricter auditing rules of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but left open the possibility of another deferral of the requirement.