Audit & Accounting

A former accountant at bank HVB Group pleaded guilty in the first prosecution arising from a Senate investigation of tax shelters.

The third edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers' study, "Audit Committee Effectiveness: What Works Best," warns that given their increased workload, audit committees need to resist the temptation to try and do everything themselves.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a revised exposure draft, titled, "Accounting for Transfers of Financial Assets."

Negotiations are continuing between federal prosecutors and KPMG, and an indictment of the firm for its role in selling tax shelters appears to have been ruled out, according to published reports.

Management consulting firm Navigant Consulting Inc. will acquire Canadian forensic accounting practice Kroll Lindquist Avey for $20 million.

An independent committee has finished its report into accounting practices at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc., and the country's second-largest doughnut chain has announced plans to reduce past income statements by more than $25 million.

WorldCom's former director of accounting Buford "Buddy" Yates and controller David Myers were each sentenced to a year and a day in prison on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, for their roles in the company's $11 billion accounting fraud.

United Rentals Inc. will hold off on finalizing its recent earnings statements until it finishes an accounting inquiry and restates more than three years of results.

Convergys Corp., a provider of customer care, human resources and billing services, completed its acquisition of the finance and accounting business process outsourcing line of Deloitte Consulting Outsourcing LLC, a subsidiary of Deloitte Consulting LLP.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has broadened its four-month-old voluntary Extensible Business Reporting Language filing program to allow mutual funds to file exhibits to their annual report to shareholders and quarterly statements of portfolio holdings using XBRL.