The Bloomberg BNA Accounting Blog is a forum for practitioners and Bloomberg BNA editors to share ideas, raise issues, and network with colleagues. The ideas presented here are those of individuals, and Bloomberg BNA bears no responsibility for the appropriateness or accuracy of the communications between group members.
April 23, 2013
In the last week the Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued two final standards and two proposed Accounting Standards Updates. On April 12, 2013, the Financial Accounting Standards...
April 9, 2013
NEW YORK—The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board in March completed their joint deliberations on the revenue recognition project. The boards are...
April 8, 2013
The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s staff March 25 2013, issued a question- and –answer guide on its proposed Accounting Standard Update, Financial Instruments- Credit Losses (Subtopic...
March 22, 2013
When the Financial Accounting Standards Board began to flesh out what became a fresh acronym in the halls of U.S. accounting's chief rulemakers – FASB's "current expected credit loss," or CECL,...
On March 20, 2013 the Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to revise its earlier decision on an effective date for public companies applying a revenue recognition accounting standard under...
March 11, 2013
In the last week the International Accounting Standards Board published two exposure drafts. The first exposure draft, released on February 28, with a comment deadline of April 2, 2013, details ...
March 4, 2013
Members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s not-for-profit committee March 1 raised the topic of joint cost allocation as a potential new project for the board to address for nonprofit...
March 1, 2013
On February 28, the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued Update No. 2013-04- Liabilities (Topic 405): Obligations Resulting from Joint and Several Liability Arrangements for Which the Total...
February 8, 2013
The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a different approach than back in September 2011 when the agency first sought to compel Deloitte’s Shanghai affiliate to produce subpoenaed work...
January 4, 2013
Security analysts who have the appellation "CPA" after their names are starting the new year with some worries that next-up accounting rules on revenue reporting may do little to prevent the kinds...
December 11, 2012
Since the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble, the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought many securities fraud enforcement actions against many defendants. Of these defendants,...
November 30, 2012
NORWALK, Conn.--Some analysts on the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Investors Technical Advisory Committee Nov. 29 said the board should not continue developing its disclosure...
November 15, 2012
An interesting question was posed Nov. 13 to senior accountants during a joint Financial Accounting Standards Board and Securities and Exchange Commission Q&A panel: how do you expect the...
The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) process, rather than providing an added value, has caused a lot more cost than it is worth and has been of little use to companies, a panel of...
October 29, 2012
BNA will hold a Webcast Nov. 16 that will include discussions on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule that requires companies using conflict minerals, that is, gold, tin, tungsten and...
The role of Chief Financial Officers have evolved to one of helping position companies to ascertain good earnings growth and ensure sustainability, discussions held by a panel of industry...
October 5, 2012
Responses to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s July staff paper on the potential path for U.S. adoption of international accounting financial standards (IFRSs), have stalled until after the...
September 18, 2012
Addressing the financial reporting needs of not-for-profit entities is proving to be more complicated than those of private companies due to the diversity among not-for-profits as well as the...
August 31, 2012
The officers on the ship of accounting rulemaking known as the Financial Accounting Standards Board sometimes have to navigate among shoals of dubious wording. The way an accounting...
August 29, 2012
When Judge Rakoff rejected the Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement with Citigroup on November 28 th , 2011, he consolidated the case with that of former Citigroup executive Brian Stoker...
August 14, 2012
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s ten year anniversary was July 31. The PCAOB was created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, in the aftermath of the Enron and WorldCom accounting...
July 31, 2012
The diversity in how analysts and investors look at leases in practice appears to be making it much harder for the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board to achieve their objectives for the joint lease accounting project.
July 11, 2012
NEW YORK—Will the new pension accounting standards--to be publicly available in August by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board-- spur a new round of debate as a result of the new accounting...
Venerable guitar-maker Fender Musical Instruments and even older British soccer team Manchester United have filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to sell shares of their...
June 13, 2012
The intensity of effort by the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board to converge their standards—especially since pledging to complete their top four priority projects in 2013—has left exhaustion in its wake.
June 6, 2012
Cross-cutting issues involving other accounting rules appear to be impeding the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board from wrapping up discussions on how acquisition costs will be accounted for under an insurance contracts standard.
May 31, 2012
The U.S. Court of Appeals has set the case between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. for oral argument September 2012.
May 18, 2012
On April 25, 2012 the Securities and Exchange Commission sought and was granted a 3 week extension by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to respond to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu...
May 16, 2012
Should the Financial Accounting Standards Board wait for input from the expected to be established Private Company Standards Improvement Council (PCSIC) before issuing a discussion paper...
May 1, 2012
Under the new JOBS Act, the regulation-relaxing law aimed at spurring initial public offerings by “emerging growth companies,” the venerable guitar-maker Fender Musical Instruments Corp. would qualify as one such “EGC.”
April 26, 2012
In an April 11 statement over DTTC‘s - the Shanghai affiliate of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu - refusal to produce subpoenaed workpapers related to audit client Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd., DTTC’s counsel objected that DTTC had been placed in an untenable position.
April 10, 2012
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit March 15 granted the Securities and Exchange Commission’s and Citigroup’s request for a stay of lower court proceedings which had resulted in a rejection of their proposed consent judgment - a $285 million settlement.
April 4, 2012
The Dodd–Frank Act’s Section 1502 requires the Securities and Exchange Commission, in consultation with the U.S. Department of State, to propose regulations by April 2011 for companies which use “conflict minerals” from the Democratic Republic of Congo and adjoining countries, i.e. Tantalum (used in cellphones and iPods), tin, gold or tungsten.
April 2, 2012
Whatever the belief regarding the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s future private company financial reporting activities, there hasn’t appeared to be anyone disputing that the board has been making every effort to win-over the trust of its private company constituents.
March 20, 2012
Oscar Wilde once said, "Punctuality is the thief of time." A decade after U.S. and international rulemakers in accounting made their initial, formal vow to try to converge on standards, those standard-setters have struggled mightily to stay on schedules they have set for themselves. They have seen time get stolen away.
March 7, 2012
On November 28, 2011, Judge Jed Rakoff roundly rebuked the Securities and Exchange Commission for neglecting its statutory mission and refused to serve as a “handmaiden” at the “whim” of the regulatory agency.
February 28, 2012
Members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Investors Technical Advisory Committee on Jan. 31 reiterated support for the viewpoint that the board should return its project on financial statement presentation (FSP) to its priority agenda.
February 24, 2012
Lease accounting reform efforts by the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board have had a history of trouble on their path to a final, converged standard.
September 23, 2011
Doubts appear to be growing, not abating, over the wisdom of adopting international financial reporting standards for domestic use by U.S. companies.
June 23, 2011
2011-06-23 The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are trying to get all the details right in their bid to create a single, global standard for recognizing revenue. The boards June 15 decided to re-expose their proposal for revenue recognition, a slightly
June 10, 2011
The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board are keenly aware that the bad loans banks hold on their balance sheets harbor the potential for another world financial meltdown, but they aren’t quite sure what to do
May 18, 2011
Even if the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board can agree on exactly what to merge in their standards, there still will be much work to do on how and when to do it, Accounting Policy and Practice Report discovers. A recent videoconference of the boards showed m
Just as Republicans do not have the legislative muscle in both houses of Congress to repeal health care, they also will not be able repeal or substantially alter the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. However, they will try to influence its implementation, as reported in Accounting Policy a
The new year dawns with fewer than six months remaining until the FASB and the IASB face their deadline for substantially converging several of their standards, a key criterion for the SEC to use in determining if international financial reporting standards should be used in the United States. Accounting Policy a
Yet another accounting standard proposal has run into a buzz saw of constituent criticism, and so the International Accounting Standards Board has beat a retreat to the status quo in its International Accounting Standard 37, Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets. The International Accounting St
International Accounting Standards Board to converge their high priority projects by their June 30, 2011 goal was always going to be tough, but the barrage of criticism the boards received over their revenue recognition piece of it just made the effort more difficult. The revenue recognition proposal is seen by t
The convergence crush is intensifying, forcing the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board to drop two projects from their priority list for convergence by their self-imposed deadline of June 30, 2011.The boards have decided to delay until at least later in 2011 their
The European Union is coming to grips with the idea that it must have tighter controls over the auditing community within its jurisdiction, perhaps creating a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board-type agency, although they didn't go so far as to actually say that. Instead, the European Commission Oct. 13 s
The IRS Sept. 24, in announcing the 2010 instructions for Schedule UTP at the American Bar Association Section of Taxation meeting in Toronto, backed off its positions in Textron Inc. v. United States and United States v. Deloitte. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman stated that the IRS would not seek documents that
It looks like a few standards-setters have joined the social media wave. The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) recently joined Twitter. For real-time updates, follow them at http://twitter.com/FAFNorwalk
In a recent letter to leaders of the G-20 nations, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) outlined a modified accounting standards convergence strategy. This modified convergence strategy retains a June 2011 target completion date for conver
The change portended by the fresh U.S. accounting proposal on financial instruments and its planned shift to recording loans and many more items at fair value on balance sheets already appears to be causing controversy in the standard-setting world, at banks, and in seats of finance and government.
February 10, 2010
Is there a shift in attitudes toward fair value financial reporting? Financial institutions continue to argue against fair value. But other perspectives are also being advanced. Researcher Sanders Shaffer from the Boston Fed's Quantitative Analysis Unit reported recently on his analysis of a sample of large
January 25, 2010
Accounting professionals interviewed by BNA raised serious questions about whether the FASB and IASB ought to be knocking themselves out trying to converge major standards on financial instruments, revenue recognition, and leasing by their self-imposed June 30, 2011, deadline. For example, Robert Uhl, director of
January 15, 2010
Already this year,the FASB and IASB held a joint meeting by videoconference Jan. 5. Next week, they are set to meet Monday through Wednesday in London (Jan. 18 - 20), following up on their pledge to consider standards jointly as the more efficient approach to holding separate meetings.
December 8, 2009
The term of International Accounting Standards Board Chairman David Tweedie is set to expire in June 2011, which also happens to be the timeframe for the IASB and FASB to complete the massive amount of work they've undertaken to converge significant accounting guidance under the 2008 version of their memorandum of
December 4, 2009
Officials from the Financial Accounting Standards Board --- and others that support the independence of the FASB -- have been emphasizing a "decoupling" argument for about a year now, and they have been hitting the theme with new emphasis over the last month, and expect to sing the refrain at greater volume in comin
November 18, 2009
The exemption from SOX auditor attestation requirements for small businesses got most of the attention when the House Financial Services Committee approved the Investor Protection Act (H.R. 3817) Nov. 4. But the House bill also includes amendments to the authority of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.
November 3, 2009
By most reports, the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board made good progress during their joint meeting Oct. 26 - 28 in Norwalk, Conn. So much so, that the two boards agreed to meet jointly more often in 2010. "We seem to be more effective and efficient when we m
October 23, 2009
Less than a month after being installed as chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission, James Kroeker sat down with BNA senior accounting correspondent Steve Burkholder for an on-the-record interview, the transcript of which was published in the Oct. 2 issue of Accounting Policy & Practice Report
October 8, 2009
During the Oct. 5-6 meeting of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, Ralph Ferrara, managing partner of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP, asked the question: "Does the system need a hard shake?" We "continue to take this rusting superstructure and add to it," Ferrara said, expressing frustration that more out-
Accounting Under FASB's Credit Loss Model: Too Much of an Audit Challenge?
FASB-IASB’s new Revenue Recognition Standard is Coming to Town(2)
Recent Accounting and Auditing Highlights(1)
Recent Accounting and Auditing Highlights
Latest Accounting and Auditing Highlights