Audit

Call it what you like, but the first decade of the millennium has passed with many a whimper.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued final standards on postemployment benefits and municipal bankruptcy.

Public companies in Argentina will be required to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards starting in 2012.

The California Board of Accountancy is requiring CPAs licensed in California to take additional ethics education classes starting in the New Year, and all accounting firms in the state will be subject to peer review.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued a proposed accounting standards update on its subsequent events standards, amending certain recognition and disclosure requirements to avoid a conflict with the SEC.

Overstock.com has engaged KPMG as its new outside auditor, but not without a parting shot at its previous auditing firm, Grant Thornton.

Everybody has to have a Top 10 list around the New Year, and looking back over the past year, we found that WebCPA readers clicked the most on stories about taxes and accounting firm rankings.

Business consulting and internal audit firm Protiviti has begun publishing “Board Perspectives: Risk Oversight,” a new monthly newsletter aimed at corporate boards of directors.

IMGCAP(1)]Silver bells and major snow storms aside, I am struggling to get into the holiday spirit.

President Obama urged a group of leaders of community banks to increase their lending to small businesses.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has established an academic fellowship program to recruit accounting researchers to spend a year at the PCAOB’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board said it has achieved its goal of substantial convergence with International Financial Reporting Standards dated Dec. 31, 2008, with a series of new or improved standards.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has released a new assurance standard on controls at service organizations such as international outsourcers.

The Senate voted to extend funding for Small Business Administration lending programs in the Recovery Act through February 2010.

The Center for Audit Quality has issued a request for proposals to fund independent academic research on projects of interest to the auditing profession.

A group of 13 senators has written to the Appropriations Committee requesting funds to extend Small Business Administration Recovery Act lending programs.

Ernst & Young has agreed to pay $8.5 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission after the firm and six of its former and current partners were charged with playing a role in accounting fraud at Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has decided to re-propose seven auditing standards and amendments that would change the requirements for assessing audit risks.

Nearly three-quarters of finance professionals believe their company could be more efficient in the implementation of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act dealing with the outside audit of internal controls, according to a new survey.

The case of Bernard Madoff’s former auditor, David Friehling, has cast the ethics of the accounting profession into a harsh light and forced his state CPA society to take action.