The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board created a standing advisory group and named 30 individuals to assist the board in carrying out its standards-setting responsibilities.
While the PCAOB staff will draft the board’s standards, the new group will play a checks-and-balances role — and even act as a gadfly — by providing advice on priorities and policy implications of existing and proposed standards. The advisory group includes five senior financial executives at major corporations as well as professionals in accounting, auditing, corporate governance, and investment management.
“The standing advisory group will bring a multi-disciplined perspective to the board’s process of setting auditing standards,” said PCAOB chairman William McDonough, in a statement. Chief auditor Doug Carmichael, the advisory group’s first chairman, added that it will help the PCAOB review existing auditing standards to identify necessary changes and updates.
The senior finance executives named to the advisory group are James Campbell, corporate controller of Intel Corp.; Samuel Cotterell, director of financial reporting for Boise Cascade Corp.; Arnold Hanish, chief accounting officer of Eli Lilly and Co.; John Morrissey, operating controller of General Electric Corp.; and David Shedlarz, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Pfizer Inc.
Other luminaries include Lynn Turner, a managing director at research firm Glass, Lewis, and a professor at Colorado State University; Damon Silvers, associate general counsel to the AFL-CIO; and Elizabeth Monrad, executive vice president and chief financial officer for TIAA-CREF.
The PCAOB also invited four organizations to participate as observers: the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the General Accounting Office, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The advisory group will meet in both open and executive sessions. Decisions on recommendations to the board will be made at open meetings. Advisory group members will not be paid, but they will be reimbursed for expenses.