Audit & Accounting

The International Accounting Education Standards Board has released a paper on the development and management of written examinations for accountants.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has excluded credit unions from the definition of “public business entities,” exempting them from certain reporting provisions under GAAP and giving credit unions more latitude to determine what their reporting requirements should be.

During 2013, the scene was set for significant changes in financial reporting for private companies and evolved into a battle between standard-setting bodies. All the changes centered on the desire to simplify, and therefore reduce the cost of accounting for private companies. The question is, however, is simpler good enough?

PricewaterhouseCoopers has just joined the rest of the Big Four firms in officially sponsoring the work of the International Valuation Standards Council, which aims to create globally recognized and accepted valuation standards, particularly for financial instruments, and promote quality within the valuation profession.

The American Institute of CPAs and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants have proposed a framework with the goal of bringing consistency to management accounting practice across the world.

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission has released a new paper examining how frameworks such as the ones it has issued for internal control and enterprise risk management can improve the performance and governance of an organization.

Check out the digital edition of the February 2014 issue of Accounting Today.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board anticipates signing a deal by the end of the year to inspect auditing firms located in China, a long-sought goal.

International Accounting Standards Board chairman Hans Hoogervorst said in a speech Wednesday the IASB is aware of concerns about the potential costs of the converged lease accounting standards that the IASB has been developing with the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board, and he assured the audience that those costs would be kept to a minimum.

Hewlett-Packard Co. said accounting errors at Autonomy Corp. have led it to cut the reported 2010 revenue at the software maker’s largest unit by 54 percent, adding fuel to a legal dispute over its purchase of Autonomy.