Audit

Brown Smith Wallace said it has successfully completed all of its peer review examinations and received the best possible rating for its third consecutive review.

A new guidebook aims to help companies mitigate the risks of spreadsheets being misused for corporate fraud or causing multimillion-dollar reporting errors.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has officially launched its FASB Accounting Standards Codification, an online interactive research tool that will serve as the single source of authoritative nongovernmental U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

Deloitte & Touche has conducted a review for the Royal Canadian Mint to try to account for a $15.3 million discrepancy between a rolling inventory and a physical count of gold owned by the mint and its customers, and Goldfinger is apparently not to blame.

The Obama administration has sent legislation to Capitol Hill to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The Private Company Financial Reporting Committee met to discuss topics ranging from revenue recognition to FIN 48-d and loan-loss contingencies.

Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman Robert Herz refuses to accept the inevitability of another financial system collapse.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has voted to delay inspections of foreign accounting firms for up to three years after hearing an outcry over the legality of the inspections from regulators and firms overseas.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed a new standard for disclosures about the credit quality of financing receivables and the allowance for credit losses.

A study by KPMG found that goodwill impairments more than doubled during 2008 from 2007 levels at a cross-section of U.S.-based public companies.

Now that the largest public companies in the U.S. are scheduled to begin filing their financial statements using Extensible Business Reporting Language data-tagging technology this year, financial regulators are weighing additional areas to leverage the technology, said industry representatives at an XBRL International Conference in Paris.

Credit-rating agency Fitch Ratings said in a new report that it does not expect FASB’s recent amendments to off-balance-sheet accounting standards to result in negative rating actions, but it believes there will be challenges for issuers and analysts in transitioning to the new standards.

Nine trade groups representing the financial, insurance, banking, real estate and other industries have united to create a coalition with the goal of influencing accounting standard-setters who are working on revising the rules for financial instruments.

New York’s new accountancy reform law, which goes into effect July 26, 2009, broadens the definition of the scope of practice of public accountancy to include all professional services provided by a CPA.

A new study of accounting-related fraud in Western Europe has found substantial differences in the approach taken to International Financial Reporting Standards by different countries and companies.

A jury in Miami has found BDO International not liable for failing to uncover fraud in audits conducted by its U.S. member firm, BDO Seidman.

IMGCAP(1)]Samuel A. DiPiazza, Jr., has some thoughts to share about the accounting profession, his firm and the state of the economy, before his retirement, after having served as CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited since 2002.

The Ohio Society of CPAs has launched a free online job-listing service to connect businesses with contract CPAs during the recession.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board plans to provide two different views of its new online FASB Accounting Standards Codification when it launches July 1.

Ernst & Young has agreed to a record-setting $109 million nationwide settlement for failing to uncover the financial problems at health care giant HealthSouth.