The PCAOB is Auditing the Wrong Auditors
Did you know that: The Sarbanes Oxley Act requires the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to inspect audit firms with one or more public companies as clients at least once every three years, and that firms with more than…
Accounting Research Slam Dunks SEC Proposal to Allow IFRS without Reconciliation to GAAP
Would you like your staff to learn more aboutSEC reporting? Click here for a sample in-house training agenda!Teri Lombardi Yohn, an associate professor at Indiana University, has provided Senate testimony on the SEC's proposal (Rel. No. 33-8818)to permit foreign private…
FAS 144: Tailor-Made to Confound Financial Analysts
It should come as no great surprise to savvy analysts that far too many accounting standards were written to benefit someone else other than investors and analysts. FAS 144 on impairment of long-lived asset is yet another example, but perhaps…
IFRS and the U.S. Auditing Profession: Not a Match Made for Investors
About 10 years ago (maybe more... the older I get, the faster time flies), I attended a conference at the SEC where an FASB board member, Michael Crooch, averred that IFRS was no better or worse than GAAP--but that GAAP…
The Politics of Accounting Convergence: Who’s Got the Power?
The gap between U.S. GAAP (unintentional pun) and International Financial Reporting Standards is a Grand Canyon. How could it not be so, when U.S. GAAP takes up about 25,000 pages, while IFRS is a measly 2,500? And, that doesn't tell…
Are Stock Options an Efficient Form of Executive Compensation? – No!
Have you noticed how a large number of companies curtailed or eliminated their stock option grant programs when FAS 123R became effective? You frequently hear proponents of stock option programs spout the line that stock options, like nothing else, provides…
IAS 1: The Myth of ‘Fair Presentation’
I speak U.S. GAAP most of the time, so when I prepare to deliver courses on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS or IAS are basically interchangeable acronyms), I begin by re-reading some of the key standards, focusing especially on those…
The Four Sins of Stock Option Backdating
I have a weak spot in my heart for my former students--especially if they were also my tennis or cycling buddies. Chris, of the cycling variety, recently sent me this email message:...So, today I was reading some posts on the…