Audit

Edward Knauf didn't take long to get to work after rising to the chairmanship of the American Institute of CPAs' Technical Issues Committee. Within a month of his appointment, he met with the three organizations of most concern to the small and midsized accounting firms that comprise the TIC's constituents.All three - the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Auditing Standards Board, and the AICPA's Professional Ethics Executive Committee - are, in the diligent pursuit of their respective missions, putting increased pressure on auditors, who are already stretched in one direction by the demands put upon them and in another by the scarcity of human resources available to satisfy those demands.

Commerce Bancorp Inc., parent to some 375 Commerce Bank branches in the New York, Philadelphia and Southeast Florida markets, has acquired online wealth manager eMoney Advisor for $32 million.

New York-based public relations firm Burson-Marsteller released its 2005 reputation survey of, and found Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, to be the world's most admired business leader.

On the heels of the $11.2 million audit scandal at the Roslyn, N.Y., school district that resulted in the convictions of the superintendent and several associates, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi has singled out a number of school districts in Westchester and Rockland Counties for audits.

The Governmental Accounting Standard Board has published a Guide to Implementation of GASB Statement 44 on the Statistical Section.

Larry E. Bergmann, senior associate director in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Market Regulation, will retire from the regulator in January to join the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher.

In a report, Australia's auditor-general has criticized poor accounting methods in the country's Defense Department for making it impossible to vouch for more than $4 billion in financial statements.

Boom may be too strong an adjective, if only because the continuing good fortune for the Big Four has been so steady in recent year-end results.

Timothy P. Flynn, chairman and chief executive of Big Four firm KPMG, has been appointed to the board of the Financial Accounting Foundation.

Lawrence A. West, associate director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement, will depart the regulator to become a partner at the Washington office of Latham & Watkins.

Many large and midsized companies, which are required by the Internal Revenue Service to file their 2005 taxes electronically next year, have not begun preparing for the change, according to a recent poll conducted by Big Four firm KPMG.

Concluding six months of pro-bono assistance to the United Nations Development Program on the oversight of tsunami relief and reconstruction work, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP presented its final report on the project last week.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu announced aggregate revenues for its member firms totaled $18.2 billion for the 2005 fiscal year, a 10.9 percent increase from last year.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox recently met with representatives of the accounting and financial reporting software industry to express support for integrating interactive data capabilities into existing accounting and financial reporting software.

KPMG International published its 2005 Annual Review, which includes final combined revenue and growth figures achieved by KPMG member firms.

Like its U.S. counterparts, the Canadian Public Accountability Board says that the Big Four firms have more work to do in order to improve audit quality and consistently meet professional standards. It was the board's third public report on its continuing inspections of accounting firms.

The accounting support fees imposed on corporations by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will be slashed by nearly 20 percent next year, under the organization's recently released 2006 operating budget.In announcing the new budget plan for the coming year, PCAOB officials said that the board will charge publicly traded companies a total of $109.3 million in accounting support fees during 2006 - down from the $136.1 million assessed in 2005.

FIRST VIRTUAL DISMISSES PWC: Video software concern First Virtual Communications Inc. dismissed auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers and subsequently engaged Squar Milner Reehl & Williamson as its new independent accountant.In January, First Virtual filed for Chapter 11 protection. In August, the company filed a liquidation plan that proposed a reverse merger, whereby First Virtual Communications would acquire the assets of newly formed U.S. Dry Cleaning and change its name to U.S. Dry Cleaning Corp.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced it has selected deputy chief auditor and former KPMG partner Thomas Ray as its chief auditor.

A vast majority of American investors are lacking the "investor survival skills" needed to build their savings into a retirement nest egg, according to the Securities Investor Protection Corporation /Investor Protection Trust survey conducted by Opinion Research Corp.