Accounting standards

Susan G. Markel, chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement, is stepping down after 14 years at the agency.

The Center for Audit Quality has released a paper to provide guidance on applying accounting standards to residential mortgage modifications.

The International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have attracted a set of high-profile members from around the world to form an advisory group on the financial crisis.

Once again it’s the time of year for me to make resolutions that I probably won’t keep for five minutes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has released its eagerly anticipated report on mark-to-market accounting calling for improvements in fair value accounting standards, but not suspension of them.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has modernized its oil and gas company reporting requirements for the first time in more than 25 years.

Hopefully there will be many lessons learned from the Bernard Madoff scandal once there is a better understanding of exactly what happened. I am sure there will be a number of in-depth books written on the subject. There will be chapters on asset allocation, due diligence, risk management, the SEC, internal operations of investment companies, compliance officers, investment advisors, fund of funds, hedge funds, auditors, peer review, whistleblowers, independent custodians, lawsuits, transparency, and regulatory change. All of the above are very interesting, but the chapter that I am most interested in is the one on human nature.

Members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board came under pressure to relax fair value accounting rules when banking regulators would not change their capitalization requirements. FASB decided to loosen rules that kept banks from accounting for the cash flows they expected from mortgage-backed securities and other assets during impairment tests when they are categorized as available for sale, rather than just as held to maturity.

The Internal Revenue Service is proposing temporary regulations on foreign base company sales income.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued the first of two proposed standards intended to simplify the accounting for financial instruments in response to the financial crisis.

The International Accounting Standards Board has proposed requiring companies to provide additional disclosures on all their investments in debt instruments, other than those classified in the fair value through profit or loss category.

David Friehling, the auditor at the tiny accounting firm that handled Bernard Madoff's books, has been subpoenaed by investigators.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued proposed regulations that provide rules for assessing penalties against tax advisors who fail to file a true and complete tax return on a timely basis.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board have published a discussion paper that takes a joint approach to solving some perplexing questions about the recognition of revenue.

President-elect Barack Obama has named Mary Schapiro as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, replacing Christopher Cox.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has officially adopted a rule requiring public companies to begin filing their financial statements in an interactive data format, starting next year.

Marcum & Kliegman has created a task force to advise investors who may have been defrauded by Bernard Madoff and his investment management business.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued a proposed standard to address the controversial issue of applying fair value accounting to assets and liabilities acquired from a business combination.

The SEC, a tiny auditing firm, and some of the most sophisticated financial companies and hedge funds are just some of the players who missed the warning signs in the Bernard Madoff scandal.

The European Union has formalized its waiver allowing companies to file financial statements in European markets using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles -- as well as the accounting standards of five other countries -- without reconciling them to International Financial Reporting Standards. The measures declare U.S. GAAP, as well as accounting standards from Canada, China, Japan, South Korea and India, to be "equivalent" to IFRS as adopted in the European Union. An earlier transitional waiver was due to expire at the end of this year. European Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy welcomed the measures: "Today's adoption by the commission is a momentous step. It marks the culmination of important work spanning several years." Standard-setters in the U.S. and at the International Accounting Standards Board, which sets IFRS, have been working to converge the two sets of standards. Earlier this year, the U.S. announced that it would allow companies to file here in IFRS without reconciling their accounts to GAAP. The European Commission said that it would review the situation of standards in Canada, China, South Korea and India by 2011 at the latest.