President Obama urged a group of leaders of community banks to increase their lending to small businesses.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has released a new assurance standard on controls at service organizations such as international outsourcers.

The Senate voted to extend funding for Small Business Administration lending programs in the Recovery Act through February 2010.

The House passed two bills earlier this month with provisions related to the use of Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, the interactive data-tagging technology that the SEC has begun requiring large public companies to use when filing their financial statements.

A group of 13 senators has written to the Appropriations Committee requesting funds to extend Small Business Administration Recovery Act lending programs.

The American Institute of CPAs and the Financial Accounting Foundation, which oversees the Financial Accounting Standards Board, are setting up a “blue-ribbon panel” to discuss how U.S. accounting standards can best meet the needs of users of private company financial statements.

Nearly three-quarters of finance professionals believe their company could be more efficient in the implementation of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act dealing with the outside audit of internal controls, according to a new survey.

Revenue recognition fraud seems to be on the wane, according to a report by the Deloitte Forensic Center.

Leaders of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship have introduced legislation to provide more capital for small businesses by expanding SBA lending limits.

The Private Company Financial Reporting Committee met recently to discuss the impact of recent changes in accounting standards on private companies, including some confusion in the Financial Accounting Standards Board's new Codification updates.

AICPA, FEI OBJECT TO FEDERAL ACCOUNTING OVERSIGHT BOARD

New York-Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Accountant James Kroeker said that the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board should proceed with efforts to converge U.S. and international accounting standards, even though the SEC has not yet formally approved the proposed roadmap to International Financial Reporting Standards.

Brussels - If you want to know how financial regulation legislation and accountancy reforms are shaping up in the EU, you need to glance back to the start of the century.

To: Commissioners Schapiro, Aguilar, Casey, Paredes and Walter; Chief Accountant Kroeker

The U.S. accounting professionslowed down its preparation for adoption of international accounting standards over the last six months, according to a survey conducted by the American Institute of CPAs.

Japan’s Financial Services Authority has decided to permit voluntary domestic use of International Financial Reporting Standards, putting added pressure on the U.S. to follow suit.

The employment outlook in accounting and finance is expected to stabilize in the first quarter, according to a new survey of CFOs, although the hiring environment remains challenging for now.

The American Institute of CPAs joined with over a dozen other accounting organizations around the world to call for a single standard for climate change reporting.

James Leisenring, a member of the International Accounting Standards Board, told attendees at an accounting conference in New York to disregard the board’s recently issued standard for recognizing and measuring financial instruments, acknowledging that political pressures had forced the board to publish the standard.

The CFA Institute expressed its support for Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman Robert Herz’s statements on the need to “decouple” accounting standard-setting from bank regulation.