Audit

PricewaterhouseCoopers plans to reorganize its international network of member accounting firms, splitting them into three major geographic clusters.

Ascend, the national Asian-American society of accountants, held its first major conference in New York this week.

Deloitte & Touche has signed a memorandum of understanding with Canadian accounting firm Scott Rankin & Gardner for a potential merger.

Accounting firm Citrin Cooperman has appointed longtime partner F. Wayne Holton CEO.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled its next-generation system for online financial filings, IDEA, the successor to its EDGAR database.

A group representing financial executives has written to the Financial Accounting Standards Board asking to exempt private companies from the requirements of FASB Interpretation No. 48, "Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes."

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has issued its latest inspection report on KPMG, listing deficiencies in several sample audits conducted by the firm.

More than 65 percent of the CFOs and 70 percent of the audit committee members surveyed by accounting firm Crowe Chizek cited managing enterprise risk as the biggest challenge facing their organizations over the next 12 months.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said it would distribute millions of dollars to investors harmed by market-timing trading violations in mutual funds managed by Putnam Investment Management and Janus Capital Management.

Real estate mortgage schemes, foreclosure activities, equity stripping and fraud are booming. Individuals mastermind multi-tiered structures designed to hide participants or obfuscate relationships. They often have intentionally incomplete or poor financial records. These cases ordinarily involve desperate or opportunistic actions by very bright individuals, all connected by ambiguous documentation and well-hidden trails. As a result, the research, discovery, assessments, valuations and case preparation can become extremely complex.With the advancement of technology, new avenues for fraud, criminal behavior and outright negligence are surfacing. Now e-mail, cell phones and electronic monitoring systems provide volumes of information that can be used to discover the “smoking gun” in fraud cases. Using this electronic data and other hard-copy archives, the forensic investigation team, working closely with case attorneys and clients, sift through enormous volumes of documents to identify the possibility of fraud, financial reporting negligence, “cooked books” or other potential corruption.

PARKWAY PROPERTIES DISMISSES E&YParkway Properties Inc., a Jackson, Miss.-based real estate investment trust, dismissed auditor Ernst & Young LLP and engaged KPMG as its new independent accountant.

The U.S. economy is already in a recession, say a majority of CFOs and senior-level executive CPAs.

Few people actually know what a credit score represents. For example, less than one-third of Americans understand that credit scores indicate risk of not repaying a loan and not knowledge of, or attitude toward, consumer credit. That is what has come out, among other things, from a new survey commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and Washington Mutual Bank, the guys you call WaMu. Moreover, the survey reflects the fact that most Americans fail to understand that one’s credit score shows only how they use credit and does not include factors such as income and age. Those that have obtained their scores are generally the most knowledgeable, says the survey. But if you have clients who have low credit scores, what can you advise them about raising such scores? Here are some ways they can do it:

Three-quarters of U.S. CEOs expect to see foreign companies investing more in U.S. businesses over the next year, according to a survey by Grant Thornton.

An Ernst & Young partner has teamed up with a movie studio accountant to produce an online comic book based on the TV series and recent movie Get Smart that provides an overview of tax deductions for the film and TV industry.

The American Institute of CPAs has released "Audit Sampling," a newly updated audit guide containing the latest requirements and practices for auditors.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has certainly been hearing an earful in recent days from a variety of organizations warning that the amendments it is proposing to two of its accounting statements could lead to a spate of lawsuits.

The Internal Revenue Service appointed J. Richard Harvey Jr. as senior advisor to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

Several organizations are criticizing a proposed standard on accounting for loss contingencies, saying it could lead to possible abuses, including a flurry of spurious lawsuits.

Deloitte & Touche and its audit client General Motors agreed to settle a securities class-action lawsuit for a total of $303 million.