Audit

I read a little blurb a few weeks back about publishing house John Wiley & Sons' plans to print a "Sarbanes-Oxley for Dummies," the latest edition to its best-selling series.

The chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Donald T. Nicolaisen, will leave the commission in October to return to the private sector.

As if investors and public companies didn't have enough to worry about, a recent "trend alert" from Glass Lewis & Co., an investment research and proxy advisory firm in San Francisco, reported that control deficiencies reported by large companies are at an all-time high, with an increase of 87 percent between 2003 and late 2004 and early 2005.

D&T RESIGNS BRITESMILE: Big Four firm Deloitte & Touche has resigned as auditor for teeth-whitening products manufacturer and marketer BriteSmile Inc.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board's new statements on "other post-employment benefits" won't go into effect until the end of the year, but the questions are already coming in. Some queries are simply asking for a definition of "benefit," while others ask, "Do we really have to do this?"

Accounting for financial instruments with characteristics of liabilities and equities has never been easy, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board has had a hard time hammering out the difference.

Cardinal Health Inc., a maker of medical supplies, said it has set aside $25 million to cover the costs of a potential settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Premier Financial Bancorp Inc. announced a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning concealed loan losses at a bank subsidiary.

A survey by Fidelity Investments recently found that one-third of working adults are delaying their retirement plans due to financial reasons.

Saks Inc. said that its internal investigation confirmed the results of an earlier audit that one of its Saks Fifth Avenue stores overcharged vendors by millions.

Specifics of a deal are being hammered out between federal prosecutors and KPMG LLP, and the name of former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden is being floated to serve as in independent monitor of the firm's future activities.

Symbol Technologies Inc. announced that its subsidiary, Telxon Corp., has settled a lawsuit against former auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers for $18 million.

Earnings for financial planners have risen 27 percent from their 2004 levels according to a survey conducted by the College for Financial Planning in conjunction with the Financial Planning Association.

Reports say KPMG LLP is close to putting behind it a federal investigation into its sale of possibly illegal tax shelters.

British consulting group Lane Clark & Peacock said that the pension deficits for Britain's top 100 companies by market value totaled more than $66 billion as of July, and could affect the way businesses using the new International Financial Reporting Standards are run.

Grant Thornton LLP said that a Chicago judge has recommended that a case brought against the law firm regarding its bank auditing work be dismissed.

Although other states have reportedly considered the strategy, Mississippi is expected to be the first to file criminal charges against Big Four firm KPMG, in connection with benefit tax work the company performed for WorldCom.

Reinsurer MBIA Inc. recently said that it had received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may face civil charges over past reinsurance transactions.

KPMG's 404 Institute, an open forum for accounting professionals, has a two-part Webcast series in their archives for registered users on SOX compliance technology.

The IRS hasn't focused on S corporation audits in 21 years, and needs to update its data so that it can tweak its audit machinery to select audits more effectively. Therefore, they plan to select 5,000 S corporations for random audits under the National Research Program.