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A surge of mergers and acquisitions has reshaped the Silicon Valley landscape at the same time that fewer companies are launching initial public offerings.
Is that bad? At least one prominent investment banker thinks so, saying those trends could spell trouble for the region.
Paul Deninger, vice chairman of investment bank Jeffries & Company in Boston, believes […]

Commissioners gave the SEC staff the go-ahead to work with the PCAOB on making the proposed internal-control auditing standard less prescriptive and more aligned with Section 404.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is sending its accounting staff to work with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board on additional revisions to the auditing standard that has been […]

A rising chorus of business groups is calling for dramatic accounting reforms
Corporations are suffering from a severe case of restatement fatigue. Last year 10% of public companies, some 1,244, had to correct their financials, up from less than 1% a decade ago. “Did all of these [companies] get it wrong because they were incompetent, lazy, […]

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced Wednesday that deputy chief auditor Laura Phillips will step down later this year. It said Phillips had not yet accepted another position.
Phillips led the oversight body’s controversial effort to implement internal- control reporting requirements mandated by Congress in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Under pressure from businesses and lawmakers, […]

Adecco, the world’s biggest temporary employment group, on Wednesday became the latest European company to seek a delisting from the New York Stock Exchange because of limited trading volumes and high costs.
However, the decision is particularly piquant for Adecco, which became the first big European group to fall foul of the intricacies of the US […]

A FASB staff member and former KPMG partner, Lawrence W. Smith will begin his new job this summer. His appointment is the first since the SEC demanded more say in how FASB candidates are chosen.
Lawrence W. Smith, a 25-year veteran of KPMG, has been appointed to the Financial Accounting Standards Board to replace outgoing member […]

The American Bankers Association has asked securities regulators to continue exempting smaller public companies from stricter accounting requirements adopted by Congress in 2002, deferring application for another two to three years.
In a letter Monday to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, the banking trade group said it “strongly urges” smaller companies remain exempt from […]

Plans by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to overhaul the organization’s standards for internal control audits don’t go far enough to correct the problems of the PCAOB’s original ground rules - or they go too far in watering down the original Sarbanes-Oxley Act protections for investors by yielding to powerful business groups.
Or they muddy […]

Retired Congressman Michael Oxley blames the PCAOB for starting “all the problems” with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Michael Oxley has been guaranteed immortality — and perhaps a degree of infamy — since his name was affixed to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the most comprehensive set of corporate rule changes since the 1930s.
Earlier this year, Oxley retired […]

More companies are going private to avoid headaches of stricter governance rules and quarterly reviews by Wall Street
After 45 years in accounting for public companies, Sonny Durham is relieved he now works for a private concern.
Durham, former chief financial officer of Sunair Electronics, put together the transaction that took private the once publicly held radio […]