Audit

Several columns back, we wrote about a recent report from the CFA Institute called A Comprehensive Business Reporting Model: Financial Reporting for Investors. This monograph is the long-awaited update of the influential Financial Reporting in the 1990s and Beyond.The new report is authored by a committee comprising a veritable who's who of highly experienced financial analysts, and speaks forthrightly about the highly limited usefulness of current generally accepted accounting principles financial reports. (The full report is available free at http://cfapubs.org/ap/issues/v2005n4/toc.html.)

Although they are supporting new audit rules that give public companies the option to report the elimination of a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting, the Big Four accounting firms have called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue more detailed guidance for making these disclosures.At issue: the Public Company Accounting Standards Board's new Auditing Standard No. 4, which recently won SEC approval. That standard allows the management of audited companies to voluntarily commission their auditors to report whether a previously reported material weakness continues to exist - an option that accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers described as "a useful tool" for providing the public with assurance that a previously reported internal control problem no longer exists.

A federal review of 13 major contracts awarded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina pointed to poor communication as the reason behind the waste and mismanagement of some supplies and services that went unused.

The Office of Thrift Supervision approved an application from H&R Block Inc. to organize a federal savings bank in Kansas City, Mo.

Retail drugstore chain CVS Corp. said the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an informal probe into how the company accounted for a 2000 transaction.

New York's Attorney General filed a $250 million fraud suit against H&R Block Inc., accusing the tax prep giant of steering hundreds of thousands of clients to investment retirement accounts with costs higher than what they would earn back.

Bankruptcy filings rose 10 percent last year, to a record 1.78 million, according to figures released by the federal court system.

After 16 years, the executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission will step down to pursue opportunities in the private sector.

Three consumer credit reporting agencies announced that they have created a new credit scoring system to simplify the loan process for lenders and borrowers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking public comment on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's proposed ethics and auditor independence rules concerning independence, tax services and contingent fees.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the Securities and Exchange Commission is overstepping its bounds in seeking to punish corporate wrongdoing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a series of roundtables that will be held throughout the year, with a focus on speeding the implementation of new Internet tools to help provide investors and analysts with better financial information about companies and funds.

With plenty of biting words, a federal judge released former KPMG accounting executive David Greenberg on $25 million bail, ordering him to live in Manhattan under electronic monitoring until his trial for tax fraud begins.

The American Enterprise Institute will host a morning conference, titled " Sarbanes-Oxley: What Have We Learned?" on March 13.

Kroger Co., the largest supermarket company in the country, will restate its earnings for the past three years for errors in accounting of deferred taxes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies has published an exposure draft of its final report, outlining changes to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for micro-cap and small-cap public companies.

The doubling of restatements by U.S. companies last year could signal that the changes made under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are having their intended impact.

The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs has approved eight new statements on auditing standards, collectively referred to as the risk assessment standards.

Ernst & Young has launched Ernst & Young University-Tax, a virtual resource for higher tax learning and development.

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said that he was not consulted before his agency's enforcement division subpoenaed two writers for Dow Jones & Co.