SEC IFRS Roundtable Debrief: March of the Zombies
If IFRS incorporation is supposed to be some fantastic opportunity for achieving one set of accounting standards worldwide, then why was no one at the SEC's Roundtable on IFRS jumping for joy at the prospect? You would think that someone, anyone,…
SEC IFRS Roundtable Agenda and Panelists are Announced: Even Worse News than I Expected
This is a short follow-up to yesterday's post on the upcoming SEC Roundtable on International Financial Reporting Standards. As I feared, the agenda is not even on the same planet as the core questions, indicating ever more strongly that the…
No News from the SEC on its IFRS Roundtable is Bad News
I'm looking forward to the SEC's July 7th IFRS Roundtable like surgery without anesthetic. Perhaps the SEC feels much the same, as notification was only posted to its public calendar of upcoming events within the last day or two –…
Why Won’t the SEC Investigate Motorola … Again?
The following is more (see my earlier post) from PCAOB chair Jim Doty's June 2nd speech, describing an auditor's failure to correct an accounting misstatement that was "galling in its simplicity": "PCAOB inspectors found at one large firm that an…
Audit Firm Term Limits: Nothing Else Left to Try
This post more or less (actually somewhat more, than less) mirrors my answers to questions posed by Matt Kelly, editor of Compliance Week in a recent podcasted interview. The subject was audit firm term limits, or mandatory audit firm rotation;…
PCAOB Shifts into High Gear under Jim Doty
Lots of "rethinking" has been going on of late. There's a new SEC staff paper rethinking how to take IFRS adoption/convergence off life support; and the FASB and IASB are rethinking how much they can give away to special interests regarding…
“Goodwill Impairment” Accounting Could Become Less Costly – and Earnings Management a Lot Easier
When you start with a bogus asset like goodwill (itself a misnomer), it's hard to find quality in the rules that govern its measurement. The root of the problem is that business combination accounting relies on a fantasy: that an…
A Brief Exchange with an IASB Member on Hedge Accounting
A reader of my post on the CFA Institute's critique of the IASB's hedge accounting exposure draft suggested that I write to the two members of the IASB, Patrick Finnegan and Patricia McConnell, who had a close association with the…