Regulatory actions and programs

There's a new sheriff in town at the country's investment advisors and broker/dealers.The Securities and Exchange Commission's new rules on the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 require firms to have a chief compliance officer who is held accountable for the firm's compliance with all regulations.

The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs has issued a suite of eight new standards on risk assessment that should significantly improve the quality of audits of private companies.For the many audit firms that have traditionally offered high-quality audits, the new standards will probably not require a lot of additional effort.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a proposal that would require employers to recognize over funded or under funded defined benefit postretirement plans, including pension plans, in their balance sheets. The proposal would also require that employers measure plan assets and obligations as of the date of their financial statements.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that 17 companies -- compared to nine under an initiative launched last year -- have already agreed to participate in a new pilot program to use interactive data in their financial statement filings.

Senior U.S. financial executives are confident in the financial performance of their own companies, even if the economy does not perform well this year, said a survey from accounting firm Grant Thornton.

House lawmakers heard from various regulatory bodies and association leaders on ways financial reports could be made more user-friendly for investors and the general public.

Public companies and their auditors will have some added leeway to ensure compliance with still unfinalized Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rules restricting the kinds of tax services auditors can provide.

For the 2005 fiscal year, just 30 out of the country's more than 180,000 millionaires received a face-to-face audit from the Internal Revenue Service, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

The prosecution has rested in the ninth week of the government's fraud and conspiracy trial of former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and chief executive Jeffrey Skilling.

A survey of public company filings has revealed that the spike in audit fees under the early years of Sarbanes-Oxley may really have been temporary, though fees did increase in 2005.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has re-issued an exposure draft titled "The Audit of Group Financial Statements."

The former chief of defense contractor Raytheon Co. will reportedly pay a civil fine and return part of his 2000 bonus as part of a tentative settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Maryland, spoke out in strong defense of the corporate accounting legislation that bears his name last week, in a speech before the Consumer Federation of America.

Chief financial officers offered some strong opinions on the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal to expand disclosure of executive compensation, according to the first quarter "CFO Outlook Survey," conducted by Financial Executives International and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a formal investigation of Mills Corp. after more than two months of informally looking into accounting problems at the shopping mall real-estate investment trust.

Two overseas auditors have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged misconduct in the audits of British software company AremisSoft Corp.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said that it won't publicly release the control problems and structural deficiencies uncovered at the Big Four firms during its initial round of inspection reports.

In the latest turf battle to come to light between the two groups, the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy recently squabbled over NASBA's interest in the details of public company audit inspection reports.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board released a statement aimed at simplifying the accounting for servicing assets and liabilities, such as those common to mortgage securitization activities.

Risk consulting and internal audit services provider Protiviti has teamed with enterprise software company diCarta to provide a contract management compliance solution for Protiviti clients.