Audit & Accounting

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced that it its Standing Advisory Group will meet on Feb. 22 in Washington.

Grant Thornton LLP announced it will take a new approach in serving private equity firms and their portfolio companies.

KPMG said that it would miss the upcoming Feb. 16 target to complete a long-overdue audit of San Diego's 2003 financial statements.

A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of two institutional investors claims that computer manufacturer Dell Inc. inflated its profits with secret payments of about $1 billion a year from chip maker Intel Corp.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed James L. Kroeker as deputy chief accountant in the agency’s Office of the Chief Accountant.Kroeker, 37, started work at the commission this week, where he will be responsible for resolving accounting issues and rulemaking projects, as well as oversight of private sector accounting standards-setting efforts.

A federal court in Texas has rejected a tax shelter once sold by KPMG, in a significant win that continues to lay the legal foundation for the government’s case against 16 former employees of the accounting firm and two outside advisors.

The Internal Revenue Service’s Whistleblower Office opened for business this month. The congressionally mandated program is designed to receive information that helps uncover tax cheating and provide appropriate rewards to whistleblowers.

A federal judge threw out the conviction of Kevin A. Howard, the former chief financial officer for Enron’s Broadband unit, citing a ruling in a similar case in which the jury’s verdict was vacated.

In 2006, the U.S. personal savings rate hit its lowest level since the Great Depression, according to the Commerce Department.The agency said that the country’s savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent -- meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned throughout the year, but that they also dipped into savings, or increased borrowing to finance purchases.

I was at a children’s store the other day to buy a birthday present for one of my grandchildren (I only give clothes, no toys) and the manager presented me with the offer of a sizeable discount if I opened a credit card. It was one I couldn’t refuse but should have. So I did. I later learned that the card was issued after a credit report was pulled. I didn’t give it any thought until I just happened to check my credit report (as I do annually) to see what, if anything, it was saying. Now, I wasn’t refused that credit card but I did find a slew of mistakes on the report I reviewed, so much so that I decided to check into this rather carefully.First of all, I found that according to a study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 25 percent of the population has at least one mistake on their credit report. I’m obviously now in that group. I began to wonder how such mistakes could cost people in the way of rejected credit, and even jobs.