Audit

Standard & Poor's plans to host a forum on the merits of fair value accounting later this month.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board found problems with four audits conducted by Ernst & Young in its latest inspection report.

A merger between two corporate tax prep firms in Australia aims to give new competition to the Big Four.

The Treasury Department's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession has released a draft report outlining recommendations for improving the profession.

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins said he plans to leave the SEC at the end of his term, the latest in a string of departures for the commission.

iPro One has reached an agreement to purchase an ownership interest in HbK Sorce Financial, an investment advisory and wealth management firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management.

Amper Politziner & Mattia has merged with Goldenberg Rosenthal to create one of the largest regional firms in the Northeast.

Genworth Financial Investment Services has launched a new section of its Web site dedicated to practice management.

Three accounting firms based in Jackson, Miss., are combining with CPA firm BKD LLP.

Big Four firm KPMG could potentially face negligence litigation stemming from its audits of New Century Financial, the troubled mortgage company that collapsed last April, according to a report from an examiner for the bankruptcy court.The examiner, Michael Missal, a partner with Washington, D.C.-based law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, said in a 580-page report that KPMG “failed to exercise due care in planning and carrying out its audits and reviews, failed to demonstrate appropriate professional skepticism with respect to management’s judgments, and failed to obtain sufficient competent evidence to support its opinions and representations to the company’s officers, directors and shareholders.”

I recall a discussion in the mid-1990s as though it were yesterday.A case was made that dynamic hedging meant that everything would work out in the end and hence should not be reflected to have either gains or losses in a given reporting period.

AUDIT QUALITY GETTING BETTERSarbanes-Oxley has led to big improvements in audit quality, according to a newly released survey. Seventy-eight percent of the 253 public company audit committee members surveyed by the Center for Audit Quality rated overall audit quality as either “very good” or “excellent.” Meanwhile, 82 percent said that it has improved somewhat or significantly in the past several years.

Because we produce 22 columns a year, we’re always looking for topics. Some come from readers, others from students, and some we pluck out of midair. For this column, we thank Allan Sloan, who published a piece called Buy High, Sell Low in the Feb. 4, 2008, issue of Fortune magazine.Sloan’s article skewers the managers of the “Wall Street Four” — the large investment banking/brokerage/etc. conglomerates, including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS.

Grant Thornton has consolidated its advisory services practice, combining the firm's various advisory service lines and more than 800 professionals across the U.S. into a single division.

The American Institute of CPAs has begun publicizing the revised set of peer review standards it quietly issued earlier this year.

XBRL US, the nonprofit group working to develop the Extensible Business Reporting Language in the U.S., said it has finished codifying collections of financial and business terms for U.S. generally accepted accounting principles in XBRL format, along with an accompanying preparers guide.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board may change some accounting rules to make it more difficult for banks to get subprime loans off their books.

The total average cost of Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance reached $1.7 million last year, according to a newly released survey.

Revenue at accounting firm J.H. Cohn rose 26 percent to $221,371,000 for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2008.

Accounting software developer Intacct has raised $15 million in financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners.