The watchdog being watched

IFRS the international accounting standard setter and watchdog is now under scrutiny. The London based accounting body is being accused by the European politicians of poor governance structures, a lack of transparency and its close links to the accounting industry;...

Goodwill accounting made easier

Recently FASB announced that Private entities could chose to account for Goodwill in a simpler manner. Instead of doing an impairment test every year to get to the value of Goodwill (which is what Public companies need to do), private companies can chose to amortize...

Stealing at Grant Thornton

Craig Haver, an ex partner at Grant Thornton New York office was charged with stealing nearly $4M of money from clients. According to the latest reports, Craig had instructed the clients to send money directly to him rather than the firm’s headquarters. This had...

Accounting error in School District

The Reading School District in Pennsylvania announced that the district auditors uncovered an accounting error in the books of the organizations for 2010-2011. According to the audit, the revenues for 2010-2011 period were overstated by $15.6M. A big question here is...

IFRS hits Taiwan

Starting 2013, publicly traded companies in Taiwan will be required to state their financials in Taiwan-IFRS. It seems like the country has been preparing for this move as according to institutional investors except the land assets accounting which is different in the...

SEC vs Chinese government

On Dec. 3 the Securities and Exchange Commission formally accused the Chinese affiliates of the Big Four accounting firms of violating the U.S. law. The issue was the failure of these China based audit firms’ to provide audit work papers in ongoing accounting fraud...

HP- Autonomy Fiasco, whose fault is it?

The recent accusation of HP against Autonomy, the British software company that HP bought for $11B, raises fingers in all directions. Who is it at fault- Autonomy management, the management of HP, the auditors, or the differences in the accounting standards? Let’s...

IFRS in an accounting mess!

IFRS is in news again. This time it isn’t in context of the convergence project. It is for wrong accounting in their books! How can an international accounting standard setter have their accounting messed up? Well they did! The issue it turns out is that the...

Setting a deadline for the deadline

When the financial crisis was at its peak in 2009, the G20 group met to set a date for the worldwide convergence of the financial standards by end of the year. The deadline got postponed to mid-2011 and then again mid-2013. In a recent report from the SEC which made...

Electric company electrocuted!

Another case of embezzlement in a small company. Accounting manager of Schmitt, Inc an air conditioning and electric company in Dade City, Florida, was charged with embezzling half a million dollars from the company. Michael Cougill, the manager, forged and cashed...