Category: Accounting and Auditing

SEC to consider requiring disclosure of audit firm tenure and name of engagement partner

by Cydney Posner The SEC is expected to issue its concept release on improving audit committee reports “soon” (whatever that means) according to Compliance Week, and among the topics the SEC will examine is whether those “reports should include the audit firm’s tenure and the name of engagement partners.”  If this […]

Are non-GAAP financial measures coming under renewed scrutiny?

by Cydney Posner Potential misuse of non-GAAP financial measures may be causing some consternation once again…in the press at least. In the wake of the Enron scandal and the dot-com bust in 2003, the SEC adopted Reg G and related amendments to Reg S-K to prevent public disclosure of misleading […]

Will we see any big changes resulting from the SEC’s disclosure effectiveness project?

by Cydney Posner Let’s just say that no one at the meeting of the SEC’s Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies yesterday morning had anything nice to say about the SEC’s current disclosure regime, no matter where they sat—as a reporting company, as a banker, as an investor.  Particularly […]

An end to IFRS in the U.S.?

by Cydney Posner On May 7, in remarks before a financial reporting conference in NYC, the SEC’s Chief Accountant, James Schnurr, signaled the end of the SEC’s efforts to converge International Financial Reporting Standards  (IFRS) with U.S. GAAP.  When Schnurr joined the SEC in October, he said, SEC Chair Mary Jo […]

PCAOB publishes new “Audit Committee Dialogue”

by Cydney Posner The PCAOB has announced the publication of a new paper designed to address audit committees.  The paper, Audit Committee Dialogue, provides insights from inspections of public company auditors that should assist audit committee members in overseeing their auditors. Other similar papers are anticipated. This paper highlights two areas: key […]

Companies breathe sigh of relief — FASB to propose deferral of effective date of new revenue recognition standard

by Cydney Posner According to FASB’s “Tentative Board Decisions,” the FASB board decided yesterday to defer the effective date of the new revenue recognition standard by one year. As a result, public companies will need to apply the new revenue standard for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2017 (i.e., […]

Shareholder proposal regarding audit committee composition

by Cydney Posner As noted in this article from Compliance Week, the Corp Fin staff have refused to issue no-action relief to Citigroup agreeing that it could exclude from its proxy statement a proposal from the prolific John Chevedden regarding audit committee composition. It may be worth noting because, while the […]

Will the new revenue recognition standard wreak havoc on existing executive compensation arrangements?

by Cydney Posner Compliance Week reports on the “tectonic shift” anticipated to result from implementation of FASB’s new revenue recognition standard and the impact of that shift on executive pay. The new standard is scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of 2017; however, companies that include revenue goals […]

Companies take clawbacks into their own hands — ouch, is it always a good thing?

by Cydney Posner As Compliance Week reports, this study from PwC showed that many companies are adopting clawbacks related to their executive compensation arrangements, even before the SEC acts to implement the Dodd-Frank clawback provisions.  The PwC study looked at 100 large public companies and found that 40% had made […]

Agenda overload for audit committees?

by Cydney Posner In its 2015 Global Audit Committee Survey, KPMG found that audit committee members around the world had four key concerns: “economic and political uncertainty and volatility, regulation and the impact of public policy initiatives, operational risk, and cybersecurity.”  Another growing concern, though, was agenda overload.  According to […]