Audit

Dave Scudder has been following developments in auditing standards closely.

LeMaster Daniels has acquired Abramson Pendergast & Co., another CPA firm based in Washington State.

Deloitte's office in the Netherlands is preparing for a lawsuit by a group of investors there over its audits of food distributor Royal Ahold in a case that could cost the firm hundreds of millions of euros.

AccountantsWorld has teamed up with ExpertPlan to help accountants provide retirement-planning services to clients.

CPA firm Habif, Arogeti & Wynne has acquired another Atlanta-based accounting firm, Miller Ray Houser & Stewart, in a multimillion-dollar deal.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plans to explain the deficiencies it found in its recent inspections of smaller auditing firms during an upcoming webcast.

WebCPA presents a free online session discussing various facets of philanthropy and its potential benefits for accountants.

Auditors at some of the largest accounting firms are working on tougher standards for valuing the assets of banks in an effort to calm jittery investors.

It began in college, continued in law school, and still exists today, my fascination with court and disciplinary opinions that provide an inside view of something the involved parties would rather had never come to light. The most recent one is a PCAOB disciplinary order involving an accountant who worked for KPMG.

CVS CAREMARK DISMISSES KPMGCVS Caremark Corp., a prescription drug provider, has jettisoned Big Four firm KPMG as its independent accountant and named Ernst & Young as its successor.

Our column in the previous issue considered the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently appointed Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting, which has been charged with finding ways to strengthen the system. As our readers might expect, we found flaws among the premises in a discussion paper by the chair, Robert Pozen (available at www.sec.gov/about/offices/oca/acifr/acifr_discussion.htm).In this column, we look at the first five of 10 specific points in Pozen’s paper that deserve exposure and that will demand additional attention from the committee. Our next column will address the remaining five.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin Monday in hedge fund Costa Brava's lawsuit against accounting firm Goodman & Co. over its audits of defense technology contractor Telos.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued a statement that requires government endowments to report their land and other real estate investments at fair value.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a sample notice that 401(k) and 414(w) plan sponsors can use to tell plan participants about their rights and obligations under the Pension Protection Act’s eligible automatic contribution arrangements and qualified automatic contribution arrangements.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has approved a budget for calendar year 2008 that predicts the board will outlay approximately $144.6 million, compared to $136.4 million in 2007.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has weaknesses in its internal controls, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

The difference between a rhetorical question and a survey question is someone answers. Before we find out what type of question my title is, here’s why I posed it. Firms find about how other firms operate in a number of ways. It might be from contact with partners in other firms; via membership in groups, organizations, or societies; by hiring consultants; or possibly by reading about other firms in professional publications.

David Greenberg, a former tax partner with KPMG, faced a superseding indictment that added six more charges of tax evasion to the charges he was already facing as part of the government's case against KPMG's marketing of questionable tax shelters for clients.

WebCPA presents a free online session discussing various facets of philanthropy and its potential benefits for accountants.

Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting announced that it has closed its acquisition of the TeamMate software business from PricewaterhouseCoopers.