Audit

Beard Miller Co. LLP will sell its Financial Outsourcing Solutions practice to McKonly & Asbury LLP in a deal effective Jan. 1.

Former Enron Corp. chief accounting officer Richard Causey was sentenced to serve 66 months in prison for signing off on the bookkeeping that led to the company's historic bankruptcy.

With the close of 2006 approaching, we asked industry leaders to share their ideas of what the accounting profession will look like in five years: What will be its major concerns? Challenges? Hot new service areas? What will shape will the firm landscape have taken?

Among all the joint tech and accounting initiatives out there XBRL seems to be the one gaining a steady amount of steam towards making real news and producing real returns for a wide audience. What remains to be seen is who’s actually able to realize real returns out of the technology.

Grant Thornton commissioned two research studies to ask if a company can switch from a Big Four audit firm to another qualified global, national or regional firm -- such as say, Grant Thornton -- without affecting stock price.

KPMG LLP has realigned its most senior private-equity partners to form the U.S. Private Equity Group. The dedicated practice will collect the firm’s extensive experience to serve the largest funds in the rapidly growing private-equity market.KPMG named Donald C. Spitzer as national managing partner for the new group.

A report was recently released at an international conference in Paris. The 20-page report is entitled “Global Capital Markets and the Global Economy: A Vision from the CEOs of the International Audit Networks,” and its authors are the heads of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Grant Thornton International, Deloitte, KPMG International, BDO International, and Ernst & Young.The report is intended to promote “a robust dialogue about how global financial reporting and public company auditing procedures must adapt to better serve capital markets around the world.”

CBiz and Mayer Hoffman McCann PC announced the expansion of its not-for-profit practice through the acquisition of CPA David Brown Jr.’s Minneapolis-area practice.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brown and several of his associates will be located in the downtown Minneapolis office of CBIZ and MHM.

Michael Haubrich, is a certified financial planner with more than 20 years experience. He is the owner of Financial Service Group a fee-only firm in Racine, Wisconsin, with some 100 million dollars in assets under management.He tells a tale that recently he met with a new client who experienced “free financial planning.” According to Michael, the client’s free planning started with a free dinner meeting, followed by a free financial consultation, and then a free financial plan that ultimately ended with an annuity sale resulting in $9,000 in commission to that financial “consultant.”

In search of a happy medium for the smaller public companies that have loudly complained about the cost of audits of their internal controls, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said a new auditing standard is on the way.In an interview with the New York Times, Cox said that he has been in regular contact with the chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to develop and propose the auditing standard. Right now, Cox said that the timetable would be for the SEC to hopefully approve the standard by the spring.

The Big Four, plus major audit players Grant Thornton and BDO International, have joined forces to call for a new business reporting model.In a paper, the firms endorse the concept of accounting rules that are standards based, offering fewer details but giving more responsibility to auditors to interpret those rules. According to the six, the concept should lead to less fraud and more useful financial information -- and ideally protect their businesses from the liabilities audit work opens a firm up to.

RSM McGladrey has announced plans to join forces with U.K.-based RSM Robson Rhodes.

LarsonAllen announced that is has acquired the offices of Florida’s Chastang, Ferrell, Sims & Eiserman LLC, in a deal effective Nov. 1.

New research covering 86 countries has confirmed that while low corporate tax rates can help give a country a significant competitive advantage over economic rivals, the advantage tends to be short term.

To flatlanders, climbing a mountain may seem like a straightforward task. After all, from down below and at a distance, the summit can be seen clearly, even obviously. But experienced mountaineers know they face a different perspective when they hit the trail toward the top.Specifically, as climbing angles steepen, the summit in their view - seemingly so easily conquerable - is nothing more than a "false summit." False summits are intervening ridges or other terrain features that are positioned between the climber and the real pinnacle in such a way that the latter is obscured.

PricewaterhouseCoopers announced that its gross worldwide revenues increased by 11 percent, to $22 billion, for the fiscal year ending June 30.

I went to Central High School of Philadelphia. I hear it now. Big whoop! Actually, it is. It is the oldest public high school in the country (founded 1836), the second oldest high school in the U.S. (Boston Latin is first), and was originally called Centre College, as part of the University of Pennsylvania. It had only boys and you needed to pass an entrance exam to get in. If you graduated at a certain level, you would be granted a Bachelor of Arts degree as set by the state. And, my other claim to fame is that Bill Cosby and I were classmates.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will delay implementation for one part of a rule relating to professionals who provide both tax and audit services to companies.Adopted in July 2005, Rule 3523, “Tax Services for Persons in Financial Reporting Oversight Roles,” went into effect on Oct. 31. The rule prohibits auditors from providing tax services to certain members of management who serve in financial reporting oversight roles at an audit client.

U.S. tax directors report that they now have greater visibility before corporate leadership, but they also believe they are spending more time on work that is less valued by their organizations because of increasing legislative and regulatory demands, according to a survey of senior tax executives by KPMG LLP.

H&R Block Inc. said that it will provide better and more transparent notification to customers detailing all the costs tied to its refund anticipation loans.