Audit

In a significant move toward unifying a number of related standards and harmonizing them with a new international standard, the Auditing Standards Board has voted out a proposed statement on quality control.It was one of three exposure drafts issued for comment by summer's end.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board named Kyra Armstrong, Ray Hamm and Jerry Decker as deputy directors in the Division of Enforcement and Investigations unit.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will commission a study to compare how the different regulatory systems that apply to broker-dealers and investment advisers affect investors.

From inside the profession, or even working closely besides it, it's sometimes hard to imagine that there's anyone who doesn't have at least a cursory understanding of what Sarbanes-Oxley meant for the profession, or why the debate over Section 404 continues years after its implementation.

A Senate report estimates that tax cheating now equals about 7 cents out of each dollar paid by honest taxpayers, or as much as $70 billion annually.

It's time for public companies to begin disclosing the reasons behind an auditor change, a new report from Glass Lewis & Co. argues.

The American Institute of CPAs has released two exposure drafts, one tackling standards for attestation engagements, another amendments to auditing standards.

Grant Thornton will not be held liable for an unqualified opinion it issued on the 1999 financial statements of Daw Technologies.

Lately, the costs of placing help-wanted ads have waned considerably at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its first-ever audit practice alert, warning auditors to be on the watch for problems in the timing and accounting of stock-option grants."Auditors planning or performing an audit should be alert to the risk that the issuer may not have properly accounted for stock option grants and ... may have materially misstated its financial statements," the alert said, alluding to recent investigations by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service into whether companies routinely backdate, spring load, or otherwise manipulate, stock options grants to top executives.

Federal prosecutors received yet another slap on the wrist from Manhattan Judge Lewis Kaplan, as the judge ruled they inappropriately used economic pressure to coerce testimony from two partners at KPMG.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will require public companies to provide more information about the pay given to top executives under rules unanimously adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As expected, Conrad W. Hewitt, a former Big Four managing partner and commissioner of California's department of financial institutions and superintendent of banking for the state, will take over the top accounting job at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A federal judge has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service went too far in retroactively banning the "Son of Boss" tax shelter.

Conrad W. Hewitt, a former Big Four managing partner and commissioner of California's department of financial institutions and superintendent of banking for the state, is expected to be named the chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many audit committees concede some specific issues and processes could be improved -- including oversight of accounting judgments and estimates, risk management and agenda setting, according to a recent survey by the Audit Committee Institute of KPMG International.

Blaming delays in information sharing, as well as a battle over who will pick up the tab for legal fees, the trial over former KPMG partners' sales of questionably legal tax shelters won't begin until Jan. 15.

I was raised in a family of medical people: father, brother, son, to name a few. Where other kids in our neighborhood might have had a Cross or a Star of David hanging over their beds, I had a caduceus. Thus, you must immediately ask, why am I writing columns such as this? Well, the answer is relatively simple. To repeat the famous cliche, I really couldn't stand the sight of blood, especially my own.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed the first charges in its stock options practices investigations, charging the former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. Gregory Reyes with misconduct linked to option grant practices.

As expected, the Financial Accounting Standards Board formally added a project to its agenda to reconsider the current accounting standards for leases.