Category: Financial Reporting Council
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What’s the Future of Audit? The Discussion Begins to Get Serious
2 comments on What’s the Future of Audit? The Discussion Begins to Get SeriousAnyone doubting the central role of accountants in human civilization need only recall that some of…
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A PCAOB “Reminder” on Significant Unusual Transactions: Is the World of Audit Guidance Now a Better Place?
Rumack: “Can you fly this plane and land it?” Striker: “Surely you can’t be serious.” Rumack:…
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The SEC’s New Rule 201 on Short Sales: Taking a Bear Position on Over-Regulation
(Paris, France) – Second thoughts on first impressions: a revisiting of my early disdain (here) for…
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Repo 105: Was Lehman’s Accounting Only Ticking Boxes? Or Is It A Ticking Box?
I’m not often inspired to take issue with my colleagues in the ink-distribution trade – mainly…
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The Valukas Report on Lehman Brothers: Sarbanes/Oxley’s Credibility Takes a Dive
A host of hard questions lurk within all nine volumes and 2200 pages of the report…
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GAAP/IFRS Convergence: The SEC’s Roadmap is a Highway Leading Nowhere
For two reasons I’ve taken a while to step into the fray about the prospects for…
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The Risk of Crashing on a Slippery Slope: Bankers and Lugers on Parallel Tracks
A Risk Management class of bright, perceptive MBA students devoted their meeting this weekend to Olympic…
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“Supplements” for the Baby Boomers — A Generation for Whom Enough is Never Enough
A diversion from the usual — motivated by a recent conversation about the Baby Boomers: that…
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The SEC Turns Up the Heat on Climate Change — Or Just More Gas?
The Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington voted by 3-2 last week to issue an “interpretive…
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Medical Check-Ups and Annual Audits: What if Your Doctor Reported Like Your Accountant?
Now being the winter of our discontent, the political scene in American is dominated by the…
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Market Concentration of the Big Four Audit Firms: The Feasibility of a Suggested Trade — Divestiture for Liability Limitations
“No such thing as a failed experiment …. only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”– American engineer-architect R.…
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On the Midwestern Calendar for March: Two Events Addressing the Audit Profession
An alert for those in the Midwest looking to warm up the chill of late winter:…
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The SEC Whacks Ernst & Young Over Bally Total Fitness — Now for the Spoils of Victory
The SEC’s proceedings last month against Ernst & Young and six of its partners, relating to…
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Auditors Missing in the Financial Crisis — Readers Offer their Thoughts
To greet the new year, instead of a backwards look at a dreary 2009, this will…
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Previewing 2010 — And a Note of Thanks
As the old year winds down to the winter solstice and all those rituals by which…
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Invitation to a Conversation: If the Auditors Were Missing from the Financial Crisis — Let’s Ask Why
Last night I saw upon the stair A little man who wasn’t there He wasn’t…
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Measuring Corporate Stewardship by the Century — A Lesson from the Oak Groves
"I know a bank where the wild thymes blow" — Oberon, Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream,"…
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Hand Washing and Swine Flu — A Hospital That Could Avoid Failing Risk Management
Risk management is, for better or worse, a constant business challenge. As examples, I’ve given recent…
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Sheep Dogs and Stewardship — Why Groom the Next Generation?
Reader reaction indicates that I touched a sensitive subject, when I suggested on November 10 –…
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Re-Posting — Internal Control Reports Under Sarbanes-Oxley: Hazards Out of Washington
In my first job in journalism, back on a small-town newspaper, the last critical deadline risk…
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Internal Control Reports Under Sarbanes-Oxley: Hazards Out of Washington
What’s in store for reporting on internal controls under the Sarbanes-Oxley law? The most important Washington…
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Sarbanes-Oxley 404(b): Auditors’ Reports on Internal Controls — A Shot in the Arm, or a Poke in the Behind?
What’s to be made of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s grant, on October 2, of…
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Why the Bankers’ Models Failed in Crisis: A GPS Program is Not the Same as Real Traffic
Lost, trapped and at risk of a serious crash. That could very well describe the participants…
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On the Calendar: What Every Auditor Should Know About Litigation
The fall speeds on, and the calendar is packed. I am looking forward with enthusiasm to…
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The Nirvana Fallacy: The Best is the Enemy of Good Thinking
I was struck last weekend by the frequency of coincidence. I was working on the curriculum…
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Global Convergence of Accounting Standards? In Whose Lifetime?
A senior member of the fraternity of pundits touchingly spoke, recently, about one effect of the…
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The Big Four Accountants and the Specter Bill to Reverse “Stoneridge”: Please Don’t Throw Me in that Briar Patch!
Because “dumbed down” education is a poor trade-off for political correctness, it is unfortunate that the…
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Happy Times for the Big Four Accounting Firms? It’s All in Whom You Read
The familiar formula for measuring forward-looking attitudes has an update: The optimist sees a glass half…
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The Weekend Press: “Billion-dollar Lawsuit Could Destroy Top Accountancy Firms”
The Finance section of this Sunday's edition of the London Telegraph carried a piece by Sean…
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Forecasting the Survival of the Big Four: Does a Black Box Model Hold the Answer?
If the global tumult of the last two years has taught us nothing else, it’s that…
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How Valuable is Today’s Audit Report? Military History’s Metaphor for “Expensive, Obsolete and Irrelevant”
The dog days of summer. I’d rather be under a beach umbrella, doing teaching outlines for…
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The Indian Government’s Reaction to Satyam — Marching Backwards to the Future
In what is still the global-scale financial scandal of the year — India’s Satyam Computer Services…
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A Scandal Erupts in Islamic Finance: The Algosaibi / Saad Dispute — And is Anyone Surprised?
An exchange of lawsuits escalated late last month between Saudi Arabia’s Algosaibi family companies and the…
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A Summer Lull for the Accountants? Sez Who?
We ought by rights to be in the summer doldrums – those still doing real jobs…
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What To Read (Two): How To Know Today, “That’s the Way It Is”
In a time when channels for the distribution of news and commentary are mutating faster than…
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What To Read: Catch 22 — The Ultimate Management Manual
Always stimulating, Francine McKenna last week posted at Re:The Auditors her advice to young professionals, "Recommendations:…
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OK — It’s Agreed: There’s a Crisis in Audit. So When Do We Get Down To It?
The city-bred sportsman hires a local fishing guide, who promises great results as they anchor in…
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Independence Day: On The Freedoms to Choose, Use and Abuse Great Personal Wealth
The national celebration this weekend in the United States, and the coming Bastille Day celebration in…
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Michael Jackson: Please Get Off the Stage
A diversion from the usual topics — because Saturday we had the privilege again to hear…