Study: U.S. CFOs Have Rosy View of Global Standards-Setting

While most CFOs from the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom favor international accounting standards over local ones, American finance chiefs like certain key aspects of the work of the International Accounting Standards Board more than their European peers do, according to a ...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 1, 2008

Is the Fair-value Fix Stalled?

For months now, standard-setters and regulators have been collecting criticisms and warnings about how to deal with fair-value accounting’s role in the credit crisis. The issue has brought their independence and integrity into question, amid intense pressures from politicians worldwide and from o...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 26, 2008

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Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

A Dreaded Real Estate Tax Rears Its Ugly Head

This month, CBS Corp. lost a tax case against the state of New York when the government successfully proved that the media company’s shareholders lost control over corporate assets as part of a merger deal. The circumstances date back to March 2000, when CBS and Viacom Inc. completed a merger in ...

By Robert Willens • Nov. 25, 2008

PCAOB to Seek 9-percent “Raise”

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plans to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission for a 9-percent budget increase for 2009. The requested $157.6 million budget will enable the board to handle recent recommendations made by a Treasury Department advisory group, along with audit cha...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 25, 2008

SEC Chief Accountant Plans His Exit

Securities and Exchange Commission chief accountant Conrad Hewitt — after more than two years of an SEC term that saw the rapid push toward international standards, the downsizing of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the battle against stock-option backdating — will resign from his po...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 25, 2008

Expect More Securitization Disclosure Soon

Accounting standard setters voted to stick a Band-aid on securitization rules today as a way of addressing disclosure problems until the standards can be properly rewritten next year. As a result, public companies will be required to reveal in their financial statement footnotes additional inform...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 24, 2008

Has the Crisis Ended the Fair-Value War?

Events have finally overtaken the debate on mark-to-market accounting, leaving previous rivals clinging together to the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s controversial standard on fair-value measurements like shipwreck victims to a raft at sea, the drama unfolding at the Securities and Excha...

By David Katz • Nov. 21, 2008

Why Gannett’s Tax Appeal Was Shot Down

In a tax case appeal settled on Tuesday, Maine’s highest court unanimously ruled against Gannett Co. — and in favor of the pine tree state — regarding how much the media giant should pay in income taxes with respect to a gain it reaped from selling off its cable division eight years ago. At issue...

By Robert Willens • Nov. 21, 2008

Accounting for Concern

A few months before XL Leisure Group, Britain’s third-largest tour operator, filed for bankruptcy in September, leaving thousands of holidaymakers stranded, it issued a set of accounts, signed off by its auditors, that gave no hint it was about to go bust. Such experiences haunt auditors as they ...

By Economist Staff • Nov. 21, 2008

GM Controller to Peers: Watch Your Assets

Being a controller has to be one of the toughest executive jobs right about now, depending on how your company and its industry are faring amid the general chaos. And the job at General Motors has got to rank among the toughest of the tough.That didn’t stop GM’s Nick Cyprus from showing up to par...

By David McCann • Nov. 20, 2008

Fair Value: It’s the Disclosures, Stupid

A former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and a one-time bank CFO, Susan Schmidt Bies looks at fair value from two sides of the debate — and she thinks “people are missing the boat.” Speaking at an industry conference this week, Bies asserted that “the focus is disclosure,” adding...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 20, 2008

Wrinkles in the IFRS Roadmap

Video interview: Click here to watch former FASB member Ed Trott explain why he opposes the SEC’s plan to move to IFRS.Video interview: Click here to watch former Michael C. Fina CFO Mark Ellis explain why he believes IFRS is inevitable and will be good for small businesses in particular.American...

By Sarah Johnson and David McCann • Nov. 17, 2008

PwC Shifts Away from Its Sands Warning

Troubled Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s recent success in the capital markets has persuaded its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, to change the qualification on its opinion. PwC said in a regulatory filing that it no longer has a substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going co...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 17, 2008

IFRS Requires a Soft Touch

Corporate accountants facing a move to IFRS are quick to say they will need technical training. But their toughest task may actually be mastering “soft skills,” says Richard Fuchs, PricewaterhouseCoopers partner and global IFRS specialist. Fuchs says a move from U.S. GAAP to IFRS will require tra...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 17, 2008

Tom Davis Inks Deal with Deloitte

Retiring Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) has inked a deal with Deloitte, the consulting giant confirmed on Monday.Davis, who starts at Deloitte Consulting next Monday, will work in the firm’s federal government services division on “technology innovation and government transformation issues, while providi...

By Roll Call Staff • Nov. 17, 2008

SEC: Early IFRS Adoption Will Cost Firms $32M

The Securities and Exchange Commission estimates that U.S. companies will spend between 0.125 percent and 0.13 percent of their revenue on making the transition to international financial reporting standards from U.S. GAAP in the first year of filing. Under the SEC’s proposed timeline, released o...

By Sarah Johnson and Marie Leone • Nov. 17, 2008

Fannie, Freddie Take Massive Noncash Charges

The third quarter earnings reports for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac embody massive noncash charges resulting, primarily, from the each entity’s establishment of a substantial “valuation allowance” against its deferred tax asset balance.A deferred tax asset represents the tax effect of “deducti...

By Robert Willens • Nov. 17, 2008

G-20 Verdict on Fair Value: Innocent

Advocates of fair-value accounting are breathing more easily following the declaration over the weekend by the Group of 20 concerning the state of the world economy and financial markets. The reason? Mark-to-market financial reporting was nowhere cited as a major cause of the collapse of financia...

By David Katz • Nov. 17, 2008

Palin Faults GOP for Profligate Spending

Gov. Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential nominee, Thursday slammed Washington Republicans for failing to hold down spending, saying the mounting debt is symptomatic of a party enmeshed in hubris and ignorant of core GOP principles.“Washington, D.C., leaders spent public money in disrega...

By Roll Call Staff • Nov. 13, 2008

GAO to IRS: Get Control of Yourself

The taxman is lucky he’s not a public-company CFO who must sign off on internal controls every year or risk federal prosecution. For years, the Internal Revenue Service has had poor internal controls over financial reporting, and this past fiscal year was no exception, according to the most recen...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 12, 2008

“Spineless?” UK Pressure Targets Fair Value Weakening

Members of the Treasury Committee of Britain’s House of Commons asked razor-sharp questions about the independence of the International Accounting Standards Board today — and especially IASB’s relaxation of fair-value accounting rules to help banks weather the credit crisis.“Spineless? Caved-in?”...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 11, 2008

Deloitte Insider Case Sparked Client Doubts about Audits

An insider-trading lawsuit brought by Deloitte & Touche against a former partner and vice chairman, Thomas Flanagan, led some corporate clients to scramble for a time to find out whether their third-quarter statements might be impaired by the allegations.In a case filed in Delaware Chancery C...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 10, 2008

Nordstrom’s State Tax Gambit Fails

One of the most venerable techniques for reducing state and local tax burdens has been to transfer intangible assets — such as trademarks and trade names — to an entity incorporated in a state other than the one in which the transferor conducts business. The transferor then enters into a licensin...

By Robert Willens • Nov. 10, 2008

Team Obama

President-elect Barack Obama met Friday with his Transition Economic Advisory Board, part of an effort to develop “a strong set of policies to respond to the economic crisis.”Flanked by his advisers at a press conference following the meeting — his first since the election — Obama emphasized that...

By Tim Reason • Nov. 7, 2008

IFRS Back on Track?

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected on Friday to formally release for comment its plan for switching publicly traded companies from the accounting standards they have used for decades to International Financial Reporting Standards.If the commission publishes the plan on Friday, it ...

By Tim Reason • Nov. 6, 2008