Audit

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued for public comment Wednesday a proposal that would define a public business entity.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has released its latest inspection report on Ernst & Young after the New York-based firm failed to address certain quality control issues to the satisfaction of the PCAOB.

Public Company Accounting Oversight Board member Jeanette Franzel told a group of accounting educators that lack of professional skepticism is one of the main reasons for the prevalence of audit weaknesses found in the PCAOB’s inspections of the work of auditing firms.

New international membership, partnerships and more ...

Deloitte leads Big Four, but smaller firms are the big winners

A roundup of A&A news from the previous month

New kinds of technology and new standards are changing the face of this core service

International Business Machines Corp., facing a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into how it reports revenue from offsite cloud services, said it stands by its accounting methods.

Accounting Today is now accepting submissions for its annual Managing Partner Elite list of top firm leaders.

Top 10 Firm BDO USA LLP announced that its revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30 was $683 million, an increase of 10.5 percent over the previous year’s revenue of $618 million.

Both public and private companies saw an increase in the auditing fees they paid to outside firms, according to a new survey by Financial Executives International.

BDO USA took the top spot in the league tables for large-firm gains of Securities and Exchange Commission audit clients in the second quarter of 2013. The Chicago-based firm, which ranks No. 8 on Accounting Today’s Top 100 Firms list, added a net nine new firms, far ahead of most other firms for the period.

Russell Golden, the newly appointed chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, will be overseeing a board that will be dealing with a new uncertain environment in which it will be only one of a number of standard-setters from around the world working together in a more multilateral way to decide on future standards for the profession to follow.

David A. Vaudt, the new chairman of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, plans to closely monitor the impact of GASB’s new pension accounting standards on the finances of state and local governments.

Firms awards scholarships, PwC opens a new office and more…

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board said Friday they plan to create a joint group to help companies and their accountants make the transition to the upcoming final converged standard on revenue recognition.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has released proposals aimed at fundamental transformation of the structure of the future auditor’s report with the goal of communicating better to users such as investors and financial analysts.

The American Institute of CPAs has issued an exposure draft resulting from AICPA’s Attestation Clarity Project in an effort to clarify the professional standards it uses for attestation engagements.

The accounting profession stayed confident about the direction of the economy this month, according to the July edition of Accounting Today’s monthly Accountants Confidence Index.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has named James L. Kroeker, former chief accountant for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as a member and vice chairman.