The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has conducted a review of safety and security procedures for employees traveling abroad in light of recent incidents of violence around the world, such as the killing of four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a new rule Wednesday to implement a JOBS Act requirement to lift the ban on general solicitation or general advertising for certain private securities offerings for business startups, while also adopting rules to discourage fraudsters from touting the investments and to add new protections for investors.

China will for the first time give audit records for a Chinese company to U.S. authorities after regulators reached an agreement in May to allow each other access to companies’ documents.

To address the market demand for training in Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, the American Institute of CPAs and XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XBRL business reporting standards in the U.S., have introduced an XBRL US GAAP Certificate Program.

The Texas Society of CPAs unveiled a Responsibility of Individuals Project at its Annual Meeting of Members last week in Las Vegas.

Only 14 percent of capital markets executives at leading investment banks believe the JOBS Act is having a positive impact on increasing the number of IPOs on U.S. exchanges, according to a new survey by BDO USA.

The House has approved a bill that prohibits the Public Company Accounting and Oversight Board from forcing public companies to automatically change or rotate their independent auditing firms.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s custody rule governing investment advisors’ custody of client assets imposes various requirements and, in turn, costs on investment advisors, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

The Financial Planning Coalition submitted a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would "vigorously oppose" attempts to weaken the fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and submitted research showing a client-first standard does not limit advice to “mass market” clients.

IT, accounting and finance administrative processes dominate the future outsourcing plans of major companies, according to a new survey by KPMG.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is issuing a new accounting standards update on Monday that defers indefinitely certain disclosures about investments held by nonpublic employee benefit plans in their plan sponsors’ own nonpublic equity securities.

Check out the digital edition of the July 2013 issue of Accounting Today.

The Government Accountability Office recommended in a new report that the Securities and Exchange Commission should consider requiring public companies where applicable to explicitly disclose whether they obtained an auditor attestation of their internal controls.

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The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment a proposed statement regarding the transition provisions of GASB’s new pension standards for state and local governments with the goal of eliminating a potential source of understatement of restated beginning net position and expense in a government’s first year of implementing GASB’s new pension accounting standards.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board plan to host a series of joint public roundtable meetings on different continents to discuss their revised joint proposals on leasing standards that were published in May.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division is launching three new initiatives to combat financial reporting and microcap fraud and enhance its risk analysis capabilities with the use of sophisticated analytical technology.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment three proposals to address the concerns of private companies about accounting for intangible assets acquired in business combinations, goodwill, and certain types of interest rate swaps under U.S. GAAP.

Intacct has added new resource scheduling capabilities and other enhancements to Intacct Project Accounting designed to automate both project accounting and project delivery within the financial system of record.