Audit & Accounting

There’s an old joke that no doubt circulates through the Trial Lawyers Association, and it goes something like this:

The European Union's 2007 agenda encompasses a range of activities aimed at achieving cohesion in accounting, auditing and finance, with taxation in particular receiving as much attention as anything else, as the focus of a number of planned efforts.For instance, the European Commission's work program cited the ongoing issue of sales tax, where examples of massive fraud have been building to a head. By March, the commission is anticipating the results of two studies: one on reducing rates, and the other dealing with how to tackle fraud.

Investment research firm Morningstar Inc. has entered into an agreement to acquire Standard and Poor’s mutual fund data business for $55 million in cash.

Vitale Caturano & Co. is facing a malpractice lawsuit for allegedly failing to properly investigate a number of red flags that could have tipped a prominent New England family off to the looting of some $57 million from its trust funds.The Ayer Family Trusts holds several hundred million dollars for about 100 descendents of industrialist Frederick Ayer. Those trusts are managed under the Tenens Corp. (which does business as Essex Street Associates), and had been largely overseen by the corporation’s former chief operating office, and an employee of more than 30 years, John Doorly.

For most of my life, I have been a fairly liberal, loose-swinging person. I generally went against the mainstream and was comfortable seeking my own level and being relatively nonconformist. It served me quite well career wise.

Raymond James Financial will pay $2.75 million to a brokerage firm regulator for poor supervision of its more than 1,100 branch managers who manage their own offices.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department announced that they will work on creating detailed LIFO guidance for automobile wholesalers, manufacturers and dealers.The accounting issue confronting the automobile industry -- which involves the proper treatment of the dollar-value, last-in, first out inventory method for pooling purposes of “crossover vehicles,” which have characteristics of both trucks and cars -- was selected for the Industry Issue Resolution Program, which provides guidance to help clarify complex tax issues

Not even a year after pledging to stand by the side of its Japanese affiliate, PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that the doors to its Misuzu Audit Corp. firm would close, after revelations of the unit’s ties to a second scandal surfaced.

The International Accounting Standards Board has published an exposure draft of a slimmed-down handbook outlining its international financial reporting standard for small and midsized companies.

A federal judge in New York has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service will not have to release documents that defendants in the KPMG tax shelter case claim reveal that some IRS personnel did not believe the Big Four firm was required to register the shelters.