In an extraordinary development, lumbering mortgage finance behemoth Freddie Mac's share price climbed after the company used accounting shenanigans to a report $151 million net loss for the...

I have always talked about Sarbanes-Oxley being a gold-mine for accountants. So big a gold-mine that accountants seem to be recession-proof.That might explain the latest data showing that accounting...

Here's a warning to all audit firms: the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has signalled that it will target securitized mortgage loans and collateralized debt offerings when it inspects...

Auditors take note: from now on, you will have to tell audit committees all about compromising links BEFORE you do any work for them.As expected, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has...

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is looking at a new independence rule designed to force auditors to come clean on their links with corporations.The PCAOB has announced it will hold an...

Accounting firm Grant Thornton has been hauled over the coals by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for its slack audits.With one client, the so-called experts at Grant Thornton failed to...

To what extent is the subprime meltdown the result of an accounting technique?In theory, mark to market accounting sounds neat because it potentially gives a more realistic take by assigning a value...

KPMG's problems seem to go from bad to worse.Earlier during the week, we had reports that the US Government was pushing hard to revive its tax shelter case, promising to play fair this time. Yeah...

Accounting tools like budgeting and sales projections can be dangerous.According to new research out of Wharton, they can lead people astray because they do nothing in themselves to dispel biases,...

Late last year, I did a blog entry at how the US Government was not backing down on its determination to prosecute foremr KPMG partners for peddling dubious tax shelters. That was after Judge Lewis...

Last month I asked the question: are accountants recession-proof?. It seems that the beancounters have honed their processes and sharpened them up to the point where they could ride through and even...

Significant changes on the boards of the American accounting rule settlers. But are they for the best? And might they make things worse?As Reuters reports, the Financial Accounting Standards Board...

I have always talked about how Sarbanes-Oxley has turned out to be a licence to print money for accountants. The last time I did that was here. The question is whether that would continue if or when...

Despite best efforts, problems with audits still keep coming up. According to the International Federation of Accountants, improving audit quality requires a massive shake-up of practices and...

There seems to be a profound disconnect for chief financial officers in their first 100 days on the job. According to a McKinsey survey, most CFOs say their time is not being spent in areas where...

Debiting accounts receivable and crediting sales are the most popular methods of cooking the books. Reimbursing air travel expenses based only on itineraries supplied by travel agencies is a...

Big week for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Earlier in the week, it sent a warning to the Big Four accounting firms by pinging Deloitte $1 million for violating audit standards. The...

Several weeks ago, I did a blog entry highlighting how Iraq was an accounting black hole that's vulnerable to fraud and corruption.Now we have revelations from CBS that $1 billion of military...

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has a proposed policy statement that would allow it to rely hand over to its international counterparts inspections of non-US audit firms going over the...