Audit

Ernst & Young must pay $10.8 million to an auditor who blew the whistle on wrongdoing at a Dubai gold refiner in another black eye for the U.K. accounting industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently voted to exempt many smaller public companies from the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement for auditor attestations of their internal controls over financial reporting, but many companies have been able to bypass those audits anyway.

China’s second accounting scandal in less than a week is underscoring concern over lax corporate governance at some of the country’s fastest-growing companies.

COVID-19 has created the largest health and economic crisis in decades.

KPMG and one of its senior partners have been reprimanded and fined 455,000 pounds ($560,000) for failings in its audit of a U.K. company, the latest sanction against the Big Four auditor in recent years.

A better audit isn’t measured by the number of forms completed.

Throughout most of its decades-long history, research credit audits have exposed areas of misunderstanding and, in many circumstances, led to major disagreements with the IRS.

Existing general auditing standards can and should be complied with, despite difficulties.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is giving firms a pause until May 11, given the difficulties businesses are facing from COVID-19.

Officials and employees are working from home and doing inspections of U.S. audit firms remotely to protect them from infection.

Plans for internal audits often don’t take into account some of the most common risks, such as cybersecurity, governance and sustainability, according to a new report from the Institute of Internal Auditors.

More than half of compliance officers believe they don’t have enough resources to carry out their function adequately, and nearly a third say their auditing and monitoring process is insufficient, according to a new survey.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is exempting filers with less than $100 million in revenue from the requirement for an attestation of their ICFR by an outside auditor.

The American Institute of CPAs has debuted SOC for Supply Chain, a risk management reporting framework that CPAs can use to provide assurance services as they face risks in their supply chain ranging from coronavirus to trade to other threats.

The American Institute of CPAs updated its auditor reporting standards to conform them with recently issued auditing standards.

Audit firms need to make sure their business makes sense — and that their clients' does, too.

Who are the casualties of the SEC’s aggressive enforcement?

As with 2018, mergers made a major difference for many auditing firms – but not all.

The American Institute of CPAs will begin offering SOC for Supply Chain, a new assurance framework, this month, to help business clients have more confidence around the viability of their global supply chain in the midst of threats like the coronavirus.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is adding a third external director to its board, former SEC commissioner Troy Paredes, and establishing an Assurance Quality Advisory Committee where the firm will bring in more outside voices to help improve its audits.