The Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled the panelists scheduled to participate in the April 13 roundtable on internal controls reporting. The day-long session will feature six separate panels, with topics, including: first-year efforts; reporting to the public; planning and design; documentation and testing of internal control over financial reporting; and the use of judgment in communications and conclusions. Among those scheduled to participate are: Colleen Cunningham, of Financial Executives International; Rebecca McEnally, of the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity; Comptroller General David Walker; Edward E. Nusbaum, of Grant Thornton; Lynn E. Turner, of Glass, Lewis & Co.; James S. Turley, of Ernst & Young; Samuel A. DiPiazza, of PricewaterhouseCoopers; and John A. Thain, of the New York Stock Exchange. "The panels are comprised of highly qualified individuals that offer significant expertise and first-hand experience on these matters," said SEC Chairman William Donaldson in a statement. "[The roundtable] is an important part of the commission's overall efforts to study the initial implementation of the internal control reporting provisions."

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to allow brokers to offer fee-based advisory accounts without being regulated as investment advisors. The new rule would allow brokers to continue offering fee-based accounts without coming under regulation as advisors, provided that they meet certain requirements. According to reports, clients in such accounts must be given explicit disclosure that they are brokerage accounts, not advisory accounts, and that the brokers' interests may not be the same as their clients' interests. Brokers also must offer clients information on whom to contact at the brokerage firm if they have questions on the differences between these accounts. The commission also ordered a 90-day study into whether any changes are required regarding how brokers and advisors are regulated.

In remarks before the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged lawmakers to curtail the portfolios of mortgage concerns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, stating that stronger regulation may not be sufficient. "Without restrictions on the size of balance sheets, we put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States, a key ingredient of support for home ownership,'' Greenspan said. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the first and second largest buyers and guarantors of home mortgages, respectively. However, both became embroiled in billion-dollar accounting scandals over the past year, prompting many to call for tighter regulation of the concerns. Fannie Mae, for example, said that it would need to restate earnings by at least $8.4 billion. And earlier this week, Armando Falcon -- director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the agency that oversees both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- said that he would step down May 20. Falcon's resignation letter to President Bush comes as lawmakers have introduced legislation that would shutter OFHEO and create a stronger overseer for both.

Nearly three-fourths of workers participating in a retirement savings poll said that employers' matching contributions of up to 5 percent of their salaries would greatly influence their decision to join a savings plan at work. In its 15th annual Retirement Confidence Survey, the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that, in addition to matching employer funds, 65 percent of workers were more likely to join a company-sponsored retirement plan if the plan offered an investment option that automatically provided workers with a more conservative allocation as their retirement date approached, while 56 percent said that they would join up if the plan contained a provision that raised employee contributions by a fixed percentage when they received a pay raise. The annual study measures attitudes of workers and retirees toward saving, retirement planning and financial security. A majority of those polled admitted to being behind in their retirement savings, yet confident that they'll reach their savings goal by retirement. Some 69 percent indicated that they or their spouse had accrued some savings for retirement -- the survey's highest level in more than 10 years.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled the agenda for next week's day-long meeting on internal controls compliance. The April 13 roundtable will include a series of six panels comprised of representatives of public companies, auditors, investors and attorneys. Section 404 of the sweeping Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates that public issuers assess the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting. For large companies, compliance became mandatory last year. For smaller companies with a market cap under $700 million and over $75 million compliance becomes mandatory in 2006. The SEC said that it would seek input from executives at larger firms, including feedback on the cost and benefits. The panels will cover such issues as: the first year of compliance, reporting to the public, planning and design, and documentation and testing using judgment in communications and conclusions. In addition to the roundtable, the SEC will seek written feedback from registrants, auditors and others on their experiences in implementing Section 404, and post the comments on its Web site. The roundtable will be Webcast on the commission's Web site at www.sec.gov. Selected other materials related to the roundtable are available at http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/soxcomp.htm.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that creditors cannot seize individual retirement accounts in a bankruptcy filing, thereby classing them with pensions, 401(k)s and Social Security, which are afforded protection under bankruptcy law. The case before the court involved a bankrupt couple from Arkansas who were fighting to keep more than $55,000 in retirement savings. Last year, more than 1.6 million people filed for personal bankruptcy, versus 875,000 a decade earlier. Experts say that much of that is being driven by people 55 and older who lose their jobs and can't pay off debts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today named agency veteran Meyer Eisenberg to the post of acting director of the commission's Division of Investment Management. Eisenberg will fill on an interim basis the void created by the recent departure of division director Paul Roye, who left the SEC for a job in the private sector. Since 1998, Eisenberg has served as deputy general counsel for the commission. He previously served at the SEC from 1959 to 1970. During that period, he was the executive assistant to then-chairman Manuel F. Cohen. Current Chairman William Donaldson said in a statement, "Mike is a distinguished member of the securities bar and his history of service to the commission and to the investing public is unmatched." The SEC is actively seeking a full-time replacement for Roye.

The strain on the financial advisory business is starting to show.

* HENSSLER ENTERS ACCOUNTING JOINT VENTURE: The Henssler Financial Group, a Kennesaw, Ga.-based concern, has formed a joint venture with the Atlanta-area accounting firm of Dickinson & DiLuzio to form a new accounting division of the firm - Dickinson, DiLuzio & Henssler LLC.The new entity will provide financial consulting services for both individual and institutional clients. This partnership expands Henssler to two offices and a staff of more than 55.

The Internal Revenue Service's new rules for qualified retirement plans went into effect on March 28, but the ripple effect from the rules has yet to play out.

With limited exceptions, the tax on married couples filing jointly usually has been lower than the combined tax on married couples filing separate returns.

The embattled Roslyn School Board has filed an $11.2 million lawsuit against 10 current and former members in the aftermath to the massive accounting fraud at the Long Island school district. According to Newsday, the board members are being sued personally, and those members who served between 1998 and 2004 are accused of contributing to the alleged embezzlement of school funds. The board also voted to remove board member Patricia Schissel for failing to attend the previous five meetings. She is also named in the suit. The school district garnered national headlines following a report released by New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi that charged three former officials of the Roslyn N.Y. School District with plundering more than $11 million over an eight-year period. Former superintendent Frank A. Tassone, assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin and clerk Debra Rigano, all of whom who were alleged to have siphoned the money from district coffers, are currently awaiting indictment by the Nassau County Grand Jury. In addition, Hevesi's state probe has implicated an additional 26 people in the audit scam. The accounting firm that audited the district, Miller Lily & Pearce, which also audited over 50 additional school districts and whose affiliate sold financial software to some 250 districts across New York state, has closed down.

American accounting contains an awkward contradiction. Though 99.7 percent of the country's 4.9 million corporations are privately held, a good deal of the country's generally accepted accounting principles are primarily relevant to the financial conditions of public companies traded on equities markets.

Congress is considering new legislation that could streamline accounting procedures for tens of thousands of U.S. companies by liberalizing the rules for the use of the cash accounting method by small business taxpayers.

The General Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service have added their own muscle to a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board proposal that would restrict the ability of accountants to provide tax services to audit clients.

If you're a CPA, you've got a headache. In fact, you've probably got several headaches.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board voted to send out for comment a measure that outlines audit procedures to ferret out whether Securities and Exchange Commission issuers have fixed previously identified internal controls weaknesses. Although Sections 404 and 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that both issuers and auditors must complete an annual assessment of internal controls, the standard from the oversight body would establish a voluntary, stand-alone engagement performed only at the request of the client company at any time of the calendar or fiscal year. The public comment period will be 45 days. The rule would subsequently become final pending a vote by the SEC. Although he defined the new standard as "narrower in scope" than the PCAOB's Auditing Standard No. 2, PCAOB chairman William McDonough said, "Our proposal for a new, voluntary, auditor's engagement to attest to management's corrections of individual material weaknesses will offer companies an opportunity to provide the investing public added assurance that previously disclosed weaknesses have been corrected." While board member Daniel Goelzer said that he thinks the new proposal is important, he described it as a "narrowly drawn tool" that he hopes "will be used sparingly."

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released FASB Interpretation No. 47, Accounting for Conditional Asset Retirement Obligations, or the costs of taking plants out of service. Under FASB's new guidance, companies would have to immediately recognize on their balance sheets the costs of work that would be needed to close a factory -- such as asbestos clean-up -- even if it's uncertain when, if or how the work would be done. Interpretation 47 is effective no later than the end of fiscal years ending after Dec. 15, 2005 (Dec. 31, 2005, for calendar-year enterprises). Copies of Interpretation 47 are scheduled to be available in April 2005, through the FASB Order Department at (800) 748-0659 or by placing an order on the FASB Web site at www.fasb.org.

The Securities and Exchange Commission named Scott Friestad to the post of associate director of the commission's Division of Enforcement. In that role, Friestad, 42, will serve as a senior official in the division and assist in planning and directing the commission's investigations and other enforcement efforts. He will report to division director Stephen Cutler. Friestad joined the regulator in 1995 as a staff attorney, and his efforts have contributed to SEC enforcement actions involving Regulation FD, public company accounting and disclosure, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, insider trading, and broker/dealer regulation. Friestad has also served as a special assistant in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and was a litigator at the New York law firm of Dewey Ballantine.

While 404 may be the three most dreaded numbers that publicly traded companies in the U.S. can imagine, investors and analysts outside the country remained uniformed about the Sarbanes-Oxley rule on internal controls, and are concerned about the impact of negative disclosures. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of investors and analysts in North America, Europe and Asia who cover U.S.-listed companies, just 60 percent of analysts and investors in Europe, and a scant 40 percent in Japan, admit to some knowledge of SOX 404. Section 404 of SOX requires that the annual reports of all Securities and Exchange Commission-registered companies include a statement by management and the external auditors on the effectiveness of the company's internal controls over financial reporting. Big Four firm PwC polled 55 analysts, 45 investors and 5 credit rating agency analysts between January and February 2005. Some 39 percent of respondents were from the U.S., Mexico and Canada, 38 percent from Europe, and 23 percent from the Asia-Pacific region. Other findings include: o Only about one in four respondents claimed to have a good grasp of how Section 404 will affect mergers and acquisitions. o Nine out of 10 analysts and investors in Asia, where awareness is lowest, said that they would be very likely to sell or mark down shares in a company that was the subject of a negative disclosure, compared to seven in 10 respondents in Europe and the U.S.