Chief financial officers and senior comptrollers want more options for selecting audit firms, according to a survey released by one of those auditing firms, Grant Thornton.

The risk assessment standards, FIN 48, valuation standards, convergence, the rewriting and codification of auditing and accounting standards, ethics interpretations, and other changes impacting the accounting and auditing regulatory landscape are being driven by a number of factors. But when push comes to shove on implementation, the burden squarely falls on the companies that these rules apply to, and on CPA firms’ A&A practice group and A&A practitioners.

The Treasury Department convened an initial meeting of its Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession as the department aims to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. capital markets.

The European Union is putting the brakes on a push to converge accounting standards by delaying until the end of 2011 the need for companies to use international standards.

Barry Melancon has been leading the American Institute of CPAs since 1995. As president and CEO of the AICPA, he has been keeping busy on a number of fronts this past year. The Institute has been working with Congress on patent reform to keep tax strategy patents from taking hold. Another priority has been CPA mobility, so CPAs face fewer regulatory barriers when practicing across different states. Melancon has also been closely involved with the effort to move toward Extensible Business Reporting Language for financial statements, spearheading an initiative to assign data tags to generally accepted accounting principles. He was recently named co-vice chair of the Center for Audit Quality and to a position on the Treasury Department's new Advisory Committee on the Audit Profession. Melancon is also a member of the AICPA's delegation to the International Federation of Accountants. His accounting career began in 1979 at Bergeron & Co. in Louisiana. Before joining the AICPA, he served for eight years as executive director of the Society of Louisiana CPAs.

At the recent annual convention of the Financial Planning Association in Seattle, Daniel Moisand, its chairman, made some rather interesting and vital comments to the more than 5,000 people in attendance at its final general session. Now, understand that Moisand knows what he is talking about. He is not one of the 100 most influential people in accounting according to Accounting Today, for nothing. Is there a more serious career than financial planning, Moisand asks? “Financial planning is not usually a matter of life or death, but it can be the difference between a dead life and an active life for our clients.” Moreover, he points out that financial planning is indeed very serious and very important. “I’ve practiced in various environments, under a few different employers, under a few different compensation plans. At the heart of my work for all these years has been the financial planning process and putting clients’ interests first even when legally I didn’t have to.” He notes that the financial planning process and a self imposed high standard of care were always present. “I can tell you without a hint of equivocation that I am not special in this regard. Thousands of you keep the financial planning process and the same high standard of care required of a fiduciary at the forefront of your operations every day, all the time, even if you could legally do otherwise.” From there, he segued into the lawsuit on broker/dealers. “Much has been made of FPA’s success in fighting the infamous broker dealer exception to the Investment Adviser Act. In many other countries, the idea that a financial adviser could be exempt from fiduciary duty seems silly and the idea that a financial planner could somehow get around that standard of care borders on lunacy. Around the globe the impact of following the financial planning process effectively is profound. One great learning, or should I say, one great reminder that came from our lawsuit regarding the broker-dealer exemption was that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The public needs an easy way to identify competent and ethical financial planners.” That brought a ringing applause. Moisand noted that there were many members (actually thousands) that were practicing within wire-house firms, with several more thousands as reps of other broker/dealer firms, including many being insurance agents, bankers, not to mention some 6,000 or so as fee-only practitioners. “Members from all corners of the profession supported our lawsuit and supported our position on standards. Our stand was largely an effort to bring value and meaning to terms like financial planner and financial planning. They all share the belief in the power of financial planning, full and fair disclosure, and giving advice with the clients’ interest first. They want to foster the value of financial planning and advance the financial planning profession.” He stressed that it didn’t matter where one worked, how they were credentialed, or how they were paid. He acknowledges that there are faux planners that might even work right next to you at your own firm. “To the public, you look and sound alike. The public must be able to easily pick us out from among a slew of pretenders. If the public is to benefit from our expertise, they must receive competent and ethical services that meet effective practice standards. If we are to earn and keep the public’s trust, we must be able to hold everyone in financial services accountable for their representations.” In conclusion, Moisand emphasized the fact that through the association’s lawsuit, despite all its differences, the group banded together and even strengthened its bonds to what they had in common. “It showed that if we keep our core beliefs at the fore, we are far stronger together than our differences might imply.”

Internal auditors are being stretched thin with demands for not only increased financial reporting compliance, but also work related to fraud detection, contracts, transactions and business performance improvement, according to a new survey.

The American Institute of CPAs has begun a two- to three-year project to revise its auditing standards in an effort to achieve greater clarity.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said that regulators in different countries should avoid revising International Financial Reporting Standards to meet the needs of local markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed Paul A. Beswick to serve as senior advisor in the SEC Office of the Chief Accountant.

CaseWare IDEA Inc. and Audimation Services Inc. have released IDEA Version 7.2, the latest version of their software to give accounting and financial professionals additional capabilities to assist with audits, detect fraud and meet documentation standards.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has set up a new unit to speed the move to interactive financial reporting by public companies.

Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan has acquired investment research company Glass, Lewis & Co., for $46 million, bringing ownership of the proxy advisory provider back to North America.

ATM machine maker Diebold has been in talks with the Office of the Chief Accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission about its practice of recognizing certain revenue on a "bill and hold basis."

The Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) is living up to its name, as it has issued three white papers in response to the so-called “liquidity crisis” that began in the subprime mortgage-related markets and, according to CAQ, has spread to other corners of the credit markets with “a potentially pervasive impact on public companies generally with respect to investments held.”

Here's the situation: Your client needs to upgrade their accounting software from an out-of-the-box program to a more sophisticated, customized system. You know it and your client is avoiding it. What should you do?You might have to get a little creative.

'Truth" and "accounting" should not be concepts that are terribly hard to reconcile - unless you're also trying to bring "government" into the formula.Uniting those three ideas has been Sheila Weinberg's goal ever since she had a baby. Not that the baby had anything to do with it, but motherhood gave her some time off from her career as a CPA.

During my extended stay in college, my idea of prudent financial planning was to put enough aside to order extra cheese at Pizza Hut on Friday nights. Several decades later, Friday is still pizza night for me, and I've upgraded a bit since then. Now, in a week without any unforeseen expenses like a brake job or a cut and highlights for my wife and daughters, I can splurge on a double order of garlic knots.My rather modest financial portfolio aside, I saw recently that financial planning perks have swelled among the chief executives of Fortune 100 companies. Last year, more than 74 percent of Fortune 100 companies disclosed that their CEO received financial planning-related perks, versus just under 30 percent in 2005.

IBC JETTISONS KPMGFinancial holding company International Bancshares Corp. said that its audit committee has dismissed KPMG as its auditor and replaced the Big Four firm with McGladrey & Pullen.

We are long-time critics of generally accepted accounting principles' historical cost tradition in financial reporting. We argue for providing market values to give users the up-to-date information they need to make rational investment and credit decisions.We have had some fun in the past describing the limitations in cost-based GAAP by offering other acronyms: PEAP (Politically Expedient Accounting Principles), WYWAP (Whatever You Want Accounting Principles) and POOP (Pitifully Old and Obsolete Principles). Despite the humorous undertone, our ultimate point is serious: The current financial reporting system needs to provide better support for the capital markets. After all, they are the foundation of our economy, and work best when market participants are quickly and fully informed.