Internal Controls Lost in the Iraqi Desert

A security services unit in Iraq does not have full command of its finances, according to an audit report released by the Department of Defense’s inspector general office earlier this week. Indeed, the unit, called the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, lacks proof of whether some o...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 7, 2007

Tax Issue Is Latest Slip-up for Shaw

The Shaw Group said it will delay the filing of its 2007 annual report, which was due on Tuesday, for several days because it has not completed a review of deferred taxes. In August the construction company filed restated results for its first fiscal quarter ended November 2006 that reduced previ...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 5, 2007

Explore the Trendline➔

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

PCAOB Proposes Relying on Global Inspectors

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has proposed a new policy that would entrust international counterparts to carry out the inspections of non-American accounting firms that audit U.S. public companies. The proposed change to one of its policies follows the expansion of audit-firm over...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 5, 2007

M&A Rule Is the First to Go Global

The Financial Accounting Standards Board took one giant leap for global accounting convergence on Tuesday when it issued a revision to its rule on business combinations and a new rule on how to account for minority interests. The new standards “represent completion of FASB’s first major joint pro...

By Marie Leone • Dec. 5, 2007

Sarbox’s Influence Seeps into Nonprofits

Five years after companies began complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, nonprofit organizations have gotten into the rhythm of improving their governance policies and internal-controls documentation. In a recent survey of nonprofit executives and board members, Grant Thornton found that 92 percen...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 4, 2007

VeriFone Pays Dearly for Restatements

VeriFone Holdings said accounting errors will force it to restate its financials for the first three quarters of this year. The news nearly halved the company’s stock price Monday morning, wiping out about $2 billion in market capitalization. The company, which makes payment-processing equipment,...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 3, 2007

How LIFO Could Stall Global Accounting

Will the LIFO method of inventory accounting become a major stumbling block in efforts to get the United States to converge with the rest of the world on a single set of global financial-reporting standards?At present, the matter does seem to be a case of an irresistible force (global convergence...

By David Katz • Dec. 3, 2007

Narrowing the Equity GAAP

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed a new way of classifying financial instruments that could have characteristics of both liability and equity. FASB’s new approach would draw the line between these financial instruments, constricting the scope of those that could be classified ...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 3, 2007

SEC Unleashed to Pursue Ex-Tyco CFO

A federal judge ruled that a former Tyco International finance chief must face civil fraud charges brought by the Securities & Exchange Commission, according to the Associated Press. U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet in Manhattan denied a motion by Richard Power to dismiss the SEC’s complaint...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 3, 2007

Playing By Fewer Rules

As the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting (CIFR) gets down to business, one of its first actions may be to recommend that the U.S. financial-reporting system cut down on its use of industry-specific guidance. Such guidance is often creat...

By Sarah Johnson • Dec. 1, 2007

Filing Delay-ja vu for IKB

For the second time, IKB Deutsche Industriebank will delay the filing of its results for the six-month period ended September 30. The filing was originally due on November 15.The critical accounting issue involves the consolidation of an off-balance-sheet conduit, Rhineland Funding, into the comp...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 30, 2007

Option Grants Trigger Ulticom Restatement

Ulticom Inc. says it will restate its financials for the fiscal years ended December 31, 1996, through January 31, 2005, to correct accounting errors, some of which are related to its historical stock-option-grant practices.The company, whose market cap is around $325 million, also is evaluating ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 30, 2007

Treasury Targets Global Tax Scamming

The Treasury Department, responding to a Congressional mandate, sent a report to Capitol Hill recommending reforms to catch potential international tax abuses in the areas of transfer pricing, U.S. income-tax treaties, and the practice of “earnings stripping.” The study’s transfer pricing sectio...

By Roy Harris • Nov. 29, 2007

Enron Guilty Pleas Just Keep Coming

Just when you thought the Enron scandal was all in the past, three more participants in the massive fraud entered guilty pleas. A trio of former employees of the British bank National Westminster Bank Plc (Nat West) have pleaded guilty to a charge of wire fraud in connection with a secret investm...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 29, 2007

Oil Company Cringes at Taxman’s Call

Acergy S.A., a UK-based oil services company, warned that the results of ongoing tax audits and inquiries in France, the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States could hamper its results for the current fiscal year.Settlements in these proceedings, particularly in France, could have a material...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 29, 2007

The Many Interpreters of IFRS

Six years ago, the International Accounting Standards Board took over as an international standard-setter, using its U.S. counterpart as a model — except for one key difference. Unlike the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which has the Securities and Exchange Commission on its back, the IASB...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 28, 2007

EU Commissioner Welcomes GAAP

In an act of trans-Atlantic reciprocation, Charlie McCreevy, the European Union Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, called on the governing body to eliminate the reconciliation requirement for American companies that list their stocks on European exchanges. Currently, U.S. private issu...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 28, 2007

Freddie Buoys Cash with Cuts, Offering

Freddie Mac announced two key moves designed to boost its capital and conserve cash in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis. The nation’s second largest mortgage company said that it halved its quarterly dividend on its common stock to $0.25, and will raise $6 billion in an offering of prefer...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 28, 2007

Delphi Nine Avoid Criminal Charges

The Justice Department will not file criminal charges against nine former Delphi Corp. officials who were investigated for accounting fraud, a DOJ spokesman confirmed to CFO.com. The spokesman declined to say why the case was abandoned, something that also was not made clear in a letter DOJ sent ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 27, 2007

Lease Accounting: Falling Rents Will Boost EBITDA

While forthcoming accounting mandates will require many companies to report leasing expenses on their balance sheets, compliance with the rules will boost the EBITDA of companies with operating leases substantially, according to new research.Last year the Financial Accounting Standards Board and ...

By Alan Rappeport • Nov. 27, 2007

Re-Gifting: Unused Gift Cards Can Boost Company Income

When Saks Inc., the luxury department-store chain, recently announced that its third-quarter profit margins on merchandise faced pressure from other economic factors, it noted, however, that one factor helped it to break even. Saks’s savior was unused gift cards, a growing phenomenon that allows ...

By Alan Rappeport • Nov. 21, 2007

Government Fair-Value Rule Issued

State and local government endowment funds that hold land and other real estate as investments must report the asset or liability at fair value beginning next year, according to a new rule issued by the Government Accounting Standards Board. Currently governments report such assets and liabilitie...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 21, 2007

The Government’s Messy Books

When the current president’s father, George H.W. Bush, signed the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 into law, it required that 24 government agencies appoint CFOs and produce annual, auditable financial statements comparable to those of publicly held corporations. Seventeen years later, the pr...

By Sarah Johnson • Nov. 20, 2007

XBRL: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Jeff Klausner, CFO of Infosonics Corp., can sum up his current knowledge of XBRL in about 45 seconds. “I’ve heard of it in passing but not in any sort of detail,” says Klausner. He “would trust and hope it’s less costly than something like Sarbanes-Oxley.” Since neither his auditors nor the analy...

By Alix Stuart • Nov. 20, 2007

Accounting Change Triples Profits

Colonial Williamsburg said a change in the way it accounts for pensions was mostly responsible for a tripling of its profits for 2006, according to The Virginia Gazette. The organization’s federal tax return shows a little more than $66 million in earnings last year, compared to $23 million for...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 19, 2007