Posts Tagged ‘PCAOB’
PCAOB Previews Inspection Focus
The PCAOB plans to shake up how it will inspect audit firms this year, with a specific focus on how the pandemic has challenged financial reporting and audit risks and a promise to “reduce the predictability” of this year’s inspections. The agency published a staff alert on Tuesday outlining its priorities for 2021 inspections, so…
Read MorePCAOB Report on Pandemic Auditing
The PCAOB just published a mid-pandemic progress report on how audit firms are handling their work during coronavirus. Compliance and audit executives may want to give it a read for hints about how auditors are trying to inspect your internal controls and which risks are high priority. The report, Staff Observations and Reminders During the…
Read MorePCAOB Member Uncorks on Agenda
One of the five members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board blasted his own agency on Wednesday, saying that the regulator’s plans for the next 12 to 18 months are “a tragic mistake” that ignore the needs of investors and undermine the credibility of corporate financial reporting. The statement came from PCAOB board member…
Read MorePCAOB Shakeup! What It Means for You
The audit and compliance community rarely sees a stealth news dump from regulators over a long weekend, but we have some now: SEC chairman Jay Clayton is replacing the leading cybersecurity expert on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board with a White House aide. Kathleen Hamm, a member of the PCAOB since January 2018, will…
Read MoreMarcum Dinged on Independence Failures
Oh lord, we have another contestant for most unfortunate business misconduct of 2019. The audit firm Marcum has been sanctioned for violating rules for audit firm independence, where poor oversight from Marcum’s partner in charge of audit firm independence played a starring role. The PCAOB hit Marcum with a fine of $450,000, plus another $50,000…
Read MoreNew PCAOB Guidance on Estimates, Specialists
Heads up, audit professionals: the PCAOB has released fresh guidance on how to audit accounting estimates and how to use specialists in complex audit work — two issues that are the subject of new audit standards going into effect in 2021. Each subject has two pieces of staff guidance, so that’s four PDFs for you…
Read MoreQuestions on KPMG Ethics Fiasco
By now you might already know the news: KPMG, one of the largest audit firms in the world, has agreed to pay $50 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges from two separate scandals at the firm — one related to KPMG partners offering jobs to audit industry regulators in exchange for…
Read MoreDeloitte Inspection Report Released
The PCAOB has released its latest inspection report for Deloitte, finding that 20 percent of the audits examined were flawed enough to question whether auditors had reached defensible conclusions. This is the first inspection report we’ve seen this year for a Big 4 firm, and also the first one issued since new leadership took over…
Read MoreYet More PCAOB Inspection Hints
We have fresh intel on how the PCAOB may change its approach to inspecting audit firms, and what those changes might mean for the audit committees and internal audit executives who deal with the firms. All five PCAOB members appeared Monday at the AICPA’s annual public company accounting conference in Washington, and inspections were Issue…
Read MoreU.S. Regulators Warn on China
U.S. securities and audit regulators have issued an extraordinary warning that they are not getting the cooperation that they want from their Chinese counterparts, and that U.S.-listed companies with significant operations in China should prepare for more strained relations between U.S. and Chinese securities regulators. The message came in two parts: first, in a special…
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