Strange Bedfellows: Fair Value and the Bailout Plan

Contrary to many incorrect media reports, the guidance on fair-value accounting issued on Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board wasn’t intended as another nail in the coffin of fair-value accounting.Rather than responding to the growing cri...

By Tim Reason and David Katz • Oct. 2, 2008

GAO: Fed Agency Finance Processes Are a Mess

More than half of the federal agencies subject to the CFO Act are not living up to a financial-reporting mandate set out for them more than a decade ago. They have had trouble modernizing their systems and implementing financial management processes that are up to par with the requirements of the...

By Sarah Johnson • Oct. 2, 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

FASB Considering Additional Fair Value Guidance

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is expected to issue additional guidance on fair value accounting soon, and will discuss its plans at a meeting today, which is scheduled to begin at 9:00 am. The meeting’s original agenda included a discussion on mergers and acquisitions for non-profit or...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 1, 2008

Coming Very Soon: Fair Value Illustrated

The Financial Accounting Standards Board will break with procedure and issue new guidance on fair value accounting after only a seven-day comment period. The additional guidance will provide a concrete example of how companies should value illiquid assets under the fair value accounting method de...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 1, 2008

Fair Value: Now a Little Easier to Swallow?

New guidance issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board seems to suggest that banks and other holders of illiquid securities were being too conservative with their fair value estimates. In the clarifying memo released on Tuesday afternoon, the SE...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 30, 2008

Fed Seeks to Change Bank Capital Rules

Recently, the Federal Reserve Board requested public comments on an interagency notice of proposed rulemaking that would alter the manner in which a banking organization, under the Fed’s jurisdiction, calculates a crucial measure of financial health — so-called Tier 1 capital. In most cases, this...

By Robert Willens • Sept. 29, 2008

FASB Delays Fair-value Talk

As their fair-value accounting rules continue to get heat from bankers and legislators, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has postponed a webcast designed to discuss the issues related to FAS 157, its framework for marking assets and liabilities to market. The event — originally scheduled ...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 29, 2008

Bailout Bill Gives SEC Sweeping Power to Halt Fair Value

The critics of fair-value accounting have apparently gotten a hearing on Capitol Hill: The current bailout bill being debated today in Congress includes sections giving the Securities and Exchange Commission power to suspend mark-to-market accounting “for any issuer” and to launch a probe into th...

By David Katz • Sept. 29, 2008

FASB at Full Strength

The Financial Accounting Foundation has appointed Marc Siegel, previously of the accounting research and analysis team at RiskMetrics Group, as the newest member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.Siegel, an expert in forensic accounting, replaces George Batavick, the ex-comptroller of T...

By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 26, 2008

Will Audit Firms Go Public with Financial Results?

Privately-held audit firms could be reporting annual financial results under generally accepted accounting principles, and releasing those financial statements to the public, if the wishes of a Treasury Department advisory board are taken to heart. The Advisory Committee on the Auditing Professio...

By Marie Leone and Tim Reason • Sept. 26, 2008

Video Without Proper Accounting

The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled civil charges against an accountant in connection with his audits of the financial statements for a tiny penny-stock company.Norman Stumacher agreed, without admitting or denying the allegations in the complaint, to disgorge $25,000 plus prejudgm...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 26, 2008

IFRS Timetable Not on Time

Talk about being upstaged. Only a month ago, the announcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it planned to switch U.S companies from U.S generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to international financial reporting standards (IFRS), starting in 2010, was the talk of the tow...

By Alix Stuart • Sept. 25, 2008

Gaming Firm Gets Off Lightly; No Dice for Ex-Execs

Bally Technologies said it has settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission over an investigation of its historical revenue accounting.However, the SEC filed a civil injunctive action against two former accounting executives of the gaming-machine maker.Under the settlement, no fines, civil...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 25, 2008

ABA Levels New Blast at Fair Value

The American Bankers Association is telling the Securities and Exchange Commission that fair value accounting rules are flawed because they don’t describe how to accurately determine the value of an asset in a distressed market. In a letter sent on Tuesday, the bank lobbying group took aim at FAS...

By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 24, 2008

Medicis May Restate for Sales-Return Reserves

Medicis Pharmaceutical said that it is likely to restate its financial reports for fiscal 2003 through 2007, and the first two quarters of 2008, to reflect a new “technical interpretation” of accounting principles for sales-return reserve calculations.The drug maker said that investors should no ...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 24, 2008

FASB Delays Lawsuit Disclosures

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has changed the deadline for when companies would have been required to provide new disclosures about their contingent liabilities under a controversial proposal. Companies with a calendar fiscal year-end had been expected to comply with the rule in mid-De...

By Sarah Johnson • Sept. 24, 2008

Bernanke: Bailout Would Cool Fire Sales

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke today gave the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs a lesson on how the government’s purchase of distressed assets might produce a market in which true fair-value accounting might take hold.Along with his co-architect Treasury Secretar...

By Alan Rappeport • Sept. 23, 2008

Ready for Prime Time: Discovery’s Tax-Free Spinoff

In 2005, Discovery Holding Company (DHC) was spun-off from Liberty Media. Now, Discovery Holding is undertaking its own spin-off in conjunction with a series of restructuring steps that will culminate in its becoming a pure play programming entity. The hope is that the stock of Discovery Holding’...

By Robert Willens • Sept. 23, 2008

IASB Calls Special Credit-Crisis Confab

The International Accounting Standards Board has called a special meeting for October 2 to discuss a pair of issues that have become lightning rods in the current global credit crisis: fair-value accounting and off-balance-sheet accounting.More specifically, the IASB meeting will discuss possible...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 23, 2008

When Is a Dividend Deductible?

One of the more contentious tax issues that has cropped up over the past few years is the question of whether distributions in redemption of stock held by an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) can be deducted by the distributing corporation. The view of the Internal Revenue Service is that thes...

By Robert Willens • Sept. 18, 2008

All’s Fair

SO CONTROVERSIAL has accounting become that even John McCain, a man not known for his interest in balance sheets, has an opinion. The Republican candidate for the American presidency thinks that “fair value” rules may be “exacerbating the credit crunch”. His voice is part of a chorus of criticism...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 18, 2008

Novatel: Revenue Recognition Is OK After All

Four months after Novatel Wireless announced an internal accounting review of its revenue-recognition practices, it has concluded that no restatement is necessary. The company said it does not expect to report any material weaknesses in its filings for the first two quarters of 2008, which were d...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 17, 2008

SEC: “Breaking a Buck” Won’t Break a Bank

The top accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission rushed out an accounting “clarification” today aimed at allaying a potentially huge fear among banks: that providing financial support to money market mutual funds could require that those funds appear on the bank balance sheets.“[B]ank...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 17, 2008

Tweedie: Don’t Blame Fair Value for the Crisis

In response this week’s Wall Street cataclysm — and the “dislocation in the credit markets” in general — the International Accounting Standards Board released an update for its current projects, along with a draft report on fair-value accounting. Both specifically address the question of valuatio...

By Marie Leone • Sept. 17, 2008

Hilfiger Unit Ex-CFO Pleads Guilty to $19m Fraud

The former finance chief of a Tommy Hilfiger Group licensee pleaded guilty to mail fraud and wire fraud for allegedly stealing more than $19 million, according to Michael Garcia, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.Martin Bodner, the former finance chief of Tommy Hilfiger Handbags...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 16, 2008