The Securities and Exchange Commission voted with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to implement the bank broker provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999.

Bradley B. Rush, former CFO of Sunrise Senior Living, has sued the company for breach of contract and defamation for terminating him in May and claiming he destroyed documents.

Sanders Morris Harris Group, a financial services holding company, has acquired a 25 percent ownership interest in iPro One, a company that provides CPA practices with investment systems and products.

Kayla Gillan, one of the founding board members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, plans to leave the PCAOB by the end of January 2008 when her five-year term expires.

The American Institute of CPAs has urged the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw regulations the IRS and Treasury Department proposed in April for changing the open account debt rules between S corporations and shareholders.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Enforcement Division came under fire in a report that criticized the division's oversight of its caseload.

The American Institute of CPAs and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have set a date for FASB's Private Company Financial Reporting Committee to meet.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent comments to the Internal Revenue Service recommending changes in the redesigned form for tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.

Forensic accounting is hot for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that as a specialty it has become very lucrative. So much so, I know of firms that have stopped during traditional tax and accounting work. Also, accounting and auditing standards are increasingly delineating new obligations with regard to practitioners’ duty to protect against fraud.

The Center for Audit Quality named three of its first public board members, including a former SEC commissioner, Harvey Goldschmid.

Proxy researcher Glass Lewis & Co. has rolled out its ESG Watch List Service, a tool that enables Glass Lewis' proxy voting clients to track companies with environmental, social or governance policies and/or practices that may create operational, performance, financial, legal or accounting risks. The service incorporates ratings from IW Financial, a provider of research, analytics and consulting services that enable investors to incorporate ESG factors into the investment process. ESG Watch List Service notifies users when the practices or the ESG performance of a company within their portfolio approaches a level that may be of concern based on evaluation criteria established for the list by the client. Glass Lewis ViewPoint clients can set up one or more pre-set profiles, or can elect to create custom profiles for rating the 3,000 U.S. companies in the Glass Lewis-IW Financial databank.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged some 37 audit firms and 32 audit partners with reviewing the financials of public companies without undergoing mandatory registration with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.According to the regulator, the unregistered firms and partners conducted some 60 audits between November 2003 and October 2005.

Heading the list of trends that will shape the future of wealth management are taxes and 30-plus-year retirement planning, so says the results of a survey from the Dow Jones Wealth Management Advisory Council. This is s a group of top wealth managers that are dedicated to promoting the practice of wealth management, facilitating industry discussion, and representing the needs and concerns of the profession. Actually, in its report Wealth Trends, there are five key trends that it says will have a great influence on wealth management over the next five years. They are: 1) Taxation. James Covell, senior vp of RBC Dain Rauscher, says that tax concerns will no longer take a back seat to returns if the capital gains tax doubles. He believes that the first priority for wealth managers will be to find tax-efficient investments that ensure clients hold onto their returns. 2) The 30-Plus-Year Retirement. Joseph Montgomery, managing director of investments for Wachovia Securities, opines that no one can really live on relative returns and that with each passing year, life expectancy increases and retirement age decreases. He feels that wealth managers need to ensure that their clients consistently gain real returns rather than getting pulled into investments that follow the swings of the market. 3) Complexity of Investments. According to George Schietinger, director of Credit Suisse Private Banking USA, investment opportunities are both structurally and geographically more complicated than ever and it will only increase. Accordingly, he says that wealth managers must understand the intricate investment options and be able to explain the risks and rewards associated with these opportunities. 4) Team Approach. Montgomery stresses that the stand-alone manager will face challenges and that the future of wealth management, he believes, lies in a team approach involving disciplines such as law, accounting, trust advisory, and financial planning. He adds that each team member must bring a specialty to support the wealth manager. 5) Diversity. Michael Sawyer, managing director, wealth management, for Smith Barney, points out that wealth managers are becoming more reflective of their clientele and that the next five years will see an increase in women and minorities entering the field and reflect the make-up of the high-net-worth market. The Council members agreed that the next half decade will see a shift in the wealth management industry requiring professionals to be more responsive and knowledgeable. They point out that the clients’ need for advice will continue to grow due to an increasingly complicated financial landscape and that tomorrow’s successful wealth managers must have the support of an expert team that will provide both the information and attention to detail that clients require.

Female business owners are increasingly more educated and more willing to take risks, according to a newly released survey.

The American Institute of CPAs has issued an exposure draft of a proposed audit and accounting guide for the airline industry and is looking for comments.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a rule from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority that would crack down on abusive sales of deferred variable annuities, particularly to senior citizens.

Computer Sciences Corp. said it would restate its fiscal 2007 results after examining the impact of FASB Interpretation No. 48, or FIN 48, and discovering accounting errors for fiscal 1997 through 2007.

Although U.S. taxpayers contribute billions of dollars annually to support charitable causes, many of those very same charities are dipping deeper into the pockets of Americans by chiseling on their own taxes, government investigators charged.Auditors at the Government Accountability Office told lawmakers that charities and other tax-exempt organizations are shortchanging the Treasury to the tune of nearly $1 billion by neglecting to make payroll tax payments or pay other taxes required by the government.

DELOITTE DECLINES ATARI RE-ELECTIONBig Four firm Deloitte declined to stand for re-election as auditor to video game manufacturer Atari Inc. A regulatory filing did not give a reason for the decision. New York-based Atari said that its audit committee had received several proposals from other accounting firms. At press time a successor had not been named.

Big changes are coming for financial statements, if the Financial Accounting Standards Board's recent discussion with its advisory board is any indication.This spring, at a meeting of its Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, the board and staff discussed their working ideas on what statements could and should look like in the future if they are going to be useful. The discussion took place in the context of the board's joint project with the International Accounting Standards Board on financial statement presentation. It was held in anticipation of releasing a preliminary views document sometime this fall.