Posts Tagged ‘audit firms’
Republicans Press Ahead With PCAOB Kill
A key House committee voted Wednesday night to abolish the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, moving one early but important step forward in Republicans’ goal of ending the agency. The House Financial Services Committee voted along party lines, Republicans in favor and Democrats against, to cease funding the PCAOB and transfer all its duties and…
Read MoreRepublicans Propose Abolishing PCAOB
Republicans in Congress unveiled legislation on Friday to abolish the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and fold the PCAOB’s audit industry oversight duties into the Securities and Exchange Commission. The House Financial Services Committee released the proposed text Friday evening, presumably hoping that nobody would notice. The bill would take the PCAOB’s duties — approving…
Read MorePCAOB Points to Audit Progress
The head of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board launched a charm offensive this week, praising audit firms for falling rates of deficient audits and stressing that the PCAOB plays an important role in investor protection. I’m sure Republicans’ anti-PCAOB mood these days was just a coincidence. Erica Williams, chair of the PCAOB, spoke Wednesday…
Read MoreCall for Better Tone at Top of Audit Firms
The top accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission just fired a warning shot at the accounting industry, urging audit firms to do better at holding firm personnel accountable for misconduct and at developing a strong tone at the top overall. Said warning shot came from Paul Munter, chief accountant at the SEC, who released…
Read MoreSmall Company Audit Disaster
Wild news from the auditing world this weekend: regulators have suspended an audit firm in Colorado for fabricating its work with clients. Hundreds of businesses — including for Donald Trump’s newly public Truth Social — must now scramble to find new audit firms and re-perform prior audit work. The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped this…
Read MorePCAOB Cheating Crackdown Continues
U.S. accounting regulators today fined KPMG’s Dutch affiliate $25 million for rampant employee cheating on the firm’s training exams, and then topped that eye-popping enforcement action with two more smaller fines against Deloitte’s Indonesia and Philippines affiliates for similar offenses. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board dropped this news bomb on Wednesday morning, and it’s…
Read MoreNOCLAR Audit Proposal Keeps Going
The Public Company Accounting Oversight board is seeking more input on its controversial proposal for audit firms to look more aggressively for compliance violations at client companies, amid continuing fierce debate over the benefits and potential costs of the idea. The PCAOB announced Monday that it will hold a roundtable on March 6 to solicit…
Read MorePCAOB Talks 2024 Audit Issues
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plans to inspect more corporate audits in 2024, casting an especially watchful eye at audits of financial and IT companies, as well as businesses that engaged in mergers and acquisitions in 2023. So says an alert the PCAOB published earlier this week, previewing the agency’s priorities for 2024 audit…
Read MoreAnother Take on Auditors and Compliance Violations
Occasionally strange things happen. So when an auditor friend of mine called me to say he believes this proposal for auditors to look for compliance violations is actually easier than most people suspect, I started taking notes — because an auditor defending this idea is a rare thing indeed. The proposal, from the Public Company…
Read MorePCAOB Compliance Proposal Draws Heat
Comment letters have begun to arrive for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s proposal to have auditors look for compliance and legal violations at their client companies. So far the idea has plenty of critics — although plenty of that criticism is stuff compliance officers will like to hear. The PCAOB’s proposal is to require…
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