The European Commission said that it might delay accepting U.S. accounting standards as being equivalent to those used in the European Union.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously voted to request public comment on rules that will allow companies to use the Internet to satisfy proxy material delivery requirements.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has requested the dismissal of a mult-million-dollar claim filed following the bankruptcy of Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities.

Diane M. Rubin, a partner at San Francisco-based Novogradac & Co. LLP, was recently installed as chairwoman of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy for 2005-06.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has again put off filing financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Giovanni Prezioso, general counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he would leave the regulator to return to a post in the private sector.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Grant Thornton International, along with Bank of America, have been named as defendants in two lawsuits seeking almost $1 billion for a trio of Cayman Islands companies.

After opposition from business and the accounting profession, the International Accounting Standards Board has shelved its plans to fast-track changes to its technical corrections policy.

Investing in China may garner top billing at some international investment conferences, but 1.3 billion people building an economy with near double-digit growth rates still isn't enough to attract the interest of most CPA advisors.The risks and complications of investing in China keep most advisors away, but booming growth keeps the topic on the radar, and it's attracting additional fund companies.

* FIELDSTONE JETTISONS KPMG: Fieldstone Investment Corp. has dismissed KPMG as its auditor and named Big Four rival Deloitte as its replacement.Fieldstone, a Columbia, Md.-based residential mortgage banking concern, reported no unresolved accounting disagreement with KPMG for its two most recent fiscal years.

* AMERIPRISE SETTLES ON SALES OF 529 PLANS: Ameriprise Financial Inc. will pay $1.25 million to settle an enforcement action brought by regulators over its sales of Section 529 college savings plans, the company said. Ameriprise neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.Brokerage regulator NASD said that the action against broker and insurer Ameriprise was its first in a probe into Section 529 plan sales practices at 20 securities firms. Other investigations are ongoing.

Government officials now expect 401(k) plan sponsors to conduct periodic due diligence reviews. With respect to their 401(k) or other retirement plans, the problem is that most plan sponsors do not have the in-house resources to do so.This is not something that 401(k) plans historically did. On the heels of the recent mutual fund scandals, though, Labor Department officials indicated that sponsors had a duty to periodically investigate plans and benchmark funds and fees.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board approved its budget for 2006, which will also allow for a reduction in the support fees paid by publicly traded companies.

Yet another piece in the jigsaw of legislation controlling corporate governance, accountancy and auditing, aimed at boosting investor confidence in European Union business, is coming into focus as upgrades are being considered to the 4th and 7th Directives on risk management and internal control for unlisted companies.Those enhancements cover both off-balance-sheet arrangements and company transactions with related parties such as family members.

If the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission has succeeded in doing what it set out to do, small public companies may soon have an easier time of documenting their internal controls.Back in 1992, COSO issued a set of recommendations, "Internal Control - Integrated Framework." Ten years later, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 required companies to certify the adequacy of their internal controls, and the COSO framework became a de facto standard.

Tax practice for CPAs is changing. Recent modifications to Circular 230, the U.S. Treasury Department regulations that govern practice before the Internal Revenue Service, have established several changes that leave CPAs with a new standard for the practice of taxation.The rationale for the revised regulations is part of an IRS effort to promote ethical tax practices and curb abusive tax avoidance programs promoted by some tax professionals. Some CPA and law firms were coming up with tax-motivated transactions for clients and then packaging those transactions to sell to other companies.

Advanced degrees are being obtained by a higher percentage of the middle- and upper-class population than ever before. Many of these students hold full-time jobs. The recent development of online universities has only served to fuel this trend. The ability of working students to take a business expense deduction for tuition expenses likewise has grown in importance.With MBAs being one of the hot degrees to have as of late, because of its apparent ticket to success in many different business settings, it's a small wonder that a recent Tax Court decision has attracted more than its share of attention. That case (Allemeier Jr., T.C. Memo. 2005-207) appears to have opened up the possibility that the expense for obtaining a larger number of MBA degrees can be written off as a trade or business expense.

As the American Institute of CPAs' director of auditing and attestation, Chuck Landes has guided the Auditing Standards Board through the upheavals of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and in late October, he saw the board issue 11 inaugural standards for the audits of private companies."This was a monumental meeting," Landes said of the most recent ASB meeting. "I am just thrilled. I'm very proud of the technical staff, who have worked very hard and are finally seeing the fruits of all their labor come to fruition in the issuance of these new auditing standards. These standards make significant changes in how some auditors perform their work, and clearly they will improve the quality of auditing."

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will meet prior to the Thanksgiving holiday in order to address a number of items.

In one of his last public speaking appearances before stepping down as chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board November 30, William McDonough told a roomful of financial and accounting executives that, while much progress had been made in restoring public confidence, maintenance is an ongoing mission.