Audit

New Rules Strengthen Risk Management for Financial Markets

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has signed a deal with German authorities that will allow officials to conduct joint inspections of auditing firms in both the U.S. and Germany.

The rapid growth of Islamic finance is increasing pressure on the industry to enter the accounting mainstream, by seeking guidance from the International Accounting Standards Board, the global body which sets the tone for bookkeeping in conventional finance.

Accounting Today has issued a call for speakers for its 3rd Annual Growth & Profitability Summit, which will be held this year in Boca Raton, Fla., on October 28-30

The April edition of Accounting Today's monthly Accountants Confidence Index reversed a two-month decline, showing positive expectations for the short- and mid-term for the firs time in 2012.

President Obama signed into law on Thursday the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, also known as the JOBS Act, which lowers the regulatory and auditing barriers for companies to seek funding and enter the capital markets.

The Taxpayer Advocate Service at the Internal Revenue Service is beginning to pilot test a way for taxpayers to engage in face-to-face teleconferences with case workers to help them deal with their tax problems, and the program may expand to audits as well.

Deloitte has relaunched IAS Plus, the firm’s site devoted to news about international accounting standards.

The Center for Audit Quality sees benefits in the updated Internal Control-Integrated Framework recently proposed by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, or COSO.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board has released an exposure draft on financial discussion and analysis for public sector entities, proposing minimum required content.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued two new accounting statements, one covering items previously reported as assets and liabilities, which clarified the appropriate reporting of deferred outflows and inflows of resources, and another statement containing technical corrections to resolve conflicting guidance.

Shares in group couponing site Groupon, one of the hottest IPOs of last year, took a nosedive in after-hours trading Friday after the company admitted in its annual report that it would need to revise its revenue and net income for the fourth quarter.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is making progress on its disclosure framework project, which aims to establish an overarching framework to help the board establish requirements for disclosures in notes to financial statements.

The New York State Society of CPAs has told the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board that they need to make changes in their latest set of proposals for changing revenue recognition standards.

A House subcommittee held hearings Wednesday in which they questioned the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s recent proposal for mandatory audit firm rotation, along with the PCAOB’s push to make disciplinary proceedings against auditors public.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that the U.S. GAAP 2012 Taxonomy is now available for use in the SEC’s EDGAR online database, along with the Mutual Fund Risk/Return Summary 2012.

Like Katniss Everdeen, the young heroine of the hit movie “The Hunger Games,” auditing leaders are facing their own test of survival.

The second day of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s two-day public meeting on its proposal for mandatory audit firm rotation had its share of drama, with accusations that the Big Four firms are monopolizing the audit market at the expense of minorities, and a demand from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the PCAOB shelve the proposal because of “mission creep.”

A lawsuit from New York's attorney general accusing accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP of helping to hide financial problems at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has been sent from federal court to the New York state court where it was originally filed.

Deloitte said on Thursday it had quit as auditor for Chinese milk formula products maker Daqing Dairy Holdings Ltd hours after its shares were suspended, the accounting firm's second resignation from a Hong Kong-listed Chinese company in days.