Regulatory actions and programs

U.S. tax directors report that they now have greater visibility before corporate leadership, but they also believe they are spending more time on work that is less valued by their organizations because of increasing legislative and regulatory demands, according to a survey of senior tax executives by KPMG LLP.

H&R Block Inc. said that it will provide better and more transparent notification to customers detailing all the costs tied to its refund anticipation loans.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed and settled financial fraud charges against Delphi Corp. and six of the auto parts supplier’s former employees -- including the company’s former chief accounting officer.The SEC charged the company with engaging in a variety of accounting schemes and making material financial misstatements between 2000 and 2004, all resulting in a series of restatements totaling more than $200 million. Delphi settled the charges of financial fraud without admitting or denying the allegations, and no financial penalty was levied against the company.

Intuit Inc. announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into the software maker's stock option accounting practices without taking any punitive action.The SEC began its Intuit inquiry in June and in August, Intuit announced that based on its internal investigation of the handling of its stock options dating back to 1997, it wouldn’t need to restate past profits.

Initially, my column was only going to cover that a day after former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 plus years, the SEC announced it settled civil fraud charges involving options backdating. The agreement provides for the payment of nearly $2.4 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, a permanent injunction, a permanent officer-and-director bar, and suspension from appearing or practicing before the Commission as an accountant.The SEC had charged the former CFO of Comverse Technology, Inc., David Kreinberg and two other former Comverse executives with engaging over many years in a fraudulent scheme to grant undisclosed in-the-money options to themselves and to others by backdating stock option grants to coincide with historically low closing prices of Comverse common stock. The SEC also alleged that Kreinberg and Comverse's former chairman and CEO created a slush fund of backdated options that the former Chairman and CEO used to recruit and retain key personnel.

To assist governments and other public sector entities in appropriately accounting for the costs of employee benefits, a board within the International Federation of Accountants has issued an exposure draft of a new standard.The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board’s exposure draft No. 31, “Employee Benefits,” is based on the the International Accounting Standard No. 19, of the same name. The draft addresses the same categories of employee benefits -- short-term employee benefits, post-employment benefits, other long-term employee benefits and termination benefits.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board today announced 1- new appointments and six reappointments to its Standing Advisory Group for 2007.In May 2006, the board began soliciting nominations to fill the slots -- receiving more than 110 nominations and re-nominations. From that list, the board selected individuals with expertise in a variety of fields, including accounting, auditing, corporate finance, corporate governance, and investing in public companies.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will host a forum in New York to bring information to the small business community.The forum on auditing in the small business environment is a program designed to help registered accounting firms and public companies working in the small business community learn more about the work of the board. The forum will focus specifically on the PCAOB inspections process and the impact of new auditing standards.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has voted to propose changes to a derivatives rule issued earlier this year affecting the financial statements of asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities investors.The proposal would affect FASB Statement No. 155, “Accounting for Certain Hybrid Financial Instruments,” and allow companies not to account for embedded derivatives that are associated with prepayment risks. Community banks, insurance companies and others may be exempted from having to recognize interest-rate-driven gains and losses on their income statements. Many of those groups had said without such an exemption, their earnings might be more volatile.

In response to a senator’s inquiry, the Government Accountability Office will review the operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division and compliance department.

Next month will mark my second anniversary of being involved in-depth with the accounting profession. And I don’t think much more than a work day has ever passed without Jeffrey Skilling popping up in some fashion or another.

A federal panel is recommending changes to governmental accounting that would require the cost of future Social Security and Medicare payments to be accounted for year-by-year as workers accumulate entitlements.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled civil fraud charges against the former chief financial officer of Comverse Technology Inc., part of a case that is one of the agency’s first involving options backdating.

At the end of the massive Enron accounting scandal, the burden of serving hard time has fallen to former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling, who was sentenced to 24 years and four months in jail as he continued to maintain his innocence five years after the energy giant's historical collapse.Skilling, 52, also faces fines of $18 million, a lesser amount than the $100 million in reparations and fines sought by federal prosecutors. Lake also approved a payment of $45 million from Skilling to former employees who lost money in Enron's pension funds was also approved.

An International Federation of Accountants board has issued an exposure draft of a proposed standard, “Impairment of Cash-Generating Assets.”

Former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers will join New York hedge fund firm D.E. Shaw & Co. as a part-time managing director."Larry is an enormously gifted economist and has made major contributions as a researcher, a public servant and an academic leader," David Shaw, chairman of the $25-billion fund manager, said in a statement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that thousands of individual investors who made financial claims in the wake of the $11 billion WorldCom accounting fraud will soon receive up to $150 million from an SEC fund set up to help compensate investors for their losses.

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission issued a request for proposals to develop guidance to help organizations monitor the quality of their internal control systems.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has issued staff questions and answers about auditing the value of stock options granted to employees.The guidance provides direction for auditing a company’s estimation of the fair value of stock options granted to employees under its revised statement on share-based payments, standard, No. 123. The standard became applicable for financial statements of companies with fiscal years ending on or after June 15, 2006.

In a move that wasn’t unexpected, a judge vacated the conspiracy and fraud conviction against the late founder and former chairman of Enron Corp., Ken Lay.U.S. District Judge Sim Lake also granted the request by Lay's estate to dismiss the indictment used to bring Lay to trial. Lay died of a heart attack in early July, less than two months after a jury convicted him on six charges of conspiracy and fraud and Lake found him guilty on four charges of bank fraud.