Was Donald Trump Complicit in a Securities Fraud?
What do the race for U.S. President and financial reporting have in common? Non-GAAP performance measures! It's looks like a stretch, I know, but stay with me. If you will give me a moment to tell you about the SEC’s Accounting and…
How Accounting Standards Went Insane: It Didn’t Start with IFRS Convergence
If you subscribe to The Atlantic magazine, the title of this post may ring a bell — a riff on “How American Politics Went Insane: It Didn’t Start with Donald Trump...” from the July/August edition. Now that I have made that acknowledgement, I will…
On the Use of “Fair” in the Auditor’s Report: A Conversation with David Damant
My previous post addressed three aspects of the auditor’s report: The PCAOB* proposal to require a discussion of “critical audit matters”; Whether use of non-authoritative GAAP should be given special mention by the auditors; and The opinion language that financial statements…
The PCAOB on the Auditor’s Reporting Model: Great Progress and More To Do
Why is it that shareholders of the largest public companies could pay around $80 million for their boilerplate audit reports, if the shareholders of smaller public companies pay only $80 thousand for exactly the same end product? Or, why is it that…
FASB Decrees that 2 + 2 < 4
On the one hand, I am happy to report that we are approaching the end of the darkest era in the history of U.S. accounting standards, during which the Accounting Establishment did their best to convince the rest of us…
Move Over Kickstarter, Here Comes Crowdfunding
Yesterday was a big day for the capital markets. For the first time, startups can raise (relatively small amounts of) capital from the public without registering with the SEC and by offering its securities over the internet. It’s called “crowdfunding.” Some…
From Where I Sit, Where Investors Should Stand on the New Lease Accounting
It’s hard to pick which of the major accounting standards convergence projects has given investors the shortest shrift. But leases is notable for one thing: the FASB’s handpicked Investor Advisory Committee (IAC) panned the FASB’s proposals, and then were completely ignored.…
Before You Vote On the AICPA-CIMA Merger, Follow the Money
If you are an AICPA member, you would have recently received an email like this one: "...[The AICPA's] governing Council has authorized an online member ballot on a proposal by the AICPA and The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA)…