The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has found deficiencies in five audits conducted by Grant Thornton.Grant Thornton failed "to identify or appropriately address errors in the issuer's application of GAAP," said the PCAOB, which acts as an audit watchdog and annually inspects accounting firms with more than 100 public-company clients.Grant Thornton also did not perform certain audit tests to back up its opinions, the April 4 report said."In some c

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has announced the 2008 series of its Forums on Auditing in the Small Business Environment. These forums are designed to help share important information with registered public accounting firms and public companies operating in the small business community. The 2008 agenda will include a discussion of practical quality control policies and procedures and evolving accounting and auditing issues. The discussions also will address the application of certain auditing standards and observations from the Board's disciplinary orders.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has decided to allow nonpublic entities to defer implementation of FIN 48 to fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2007. To address this issue, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued FASB Staff Position (FSP) FIN 48-2, Effective Date of FASB Interpretation No. 48 for Certain Nonpublic Enterprises.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a settled enforcement action against Andrew J. McKelvey, the former Chief Executive Officer of Monster Worldwide, Inc., for his participation in a multi-year scheme to secretly backdate stock options granted to Monster officers, directors, and employees.The Commission's complaint alleges that, beginning in 1997, McKelvey and others backdated stock option grants to coincide with the dates of low closing prices for the Company's common stock, resulting in grants of in-the-money options to numerous individuals.

With the effective date of management's implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404(a) for non-accelerated filers (smaller public companies) fast approaching, the AICPA-affiliated Center for Audit Quality has issued an alert to provide information to auditors of those companies on items to consider during the upcoming audit season.Items to Consider Regarding Management's Report on Internal Control for Audits of Non-Accelerated FilersSome Center for Audit Quality member firms have raised questions regarding the auditor's role relative to management's report on its assessment

When corporate fraud occurs, it usually is an inside job made easier because the company had an insufficient prevention program, according to executives surveyed by the Big Four firm KPMG LLP.

When credit markets all but dried up as a result of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the late summer, auditors of investment and commercial banks that elected to adopt Financial Accounting Standard 157, Fair Value Measurements, earlier than the effective date of November 15th were called upon to play a key role in determining the market value of mortgage-backed assets when few were being traded. Many of these banks had to report huge write-downs in the third quarter from declining assets values.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC (PwC), in an occasionally strongly worded letter addressed to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), defended the quality of the six audits found to have deficiencies in the PCAOB's Report on 2006 Inspection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, released October 18th.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has published for public comment staff guidance on auditing internal control over financial reporting in smaller public companies. The guidance explains how auditors can apply the Board's internal control auditing standard, Auditing Standard No. 5, An Audit of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting That Is Integrated with An Audit of Financial Statements, to audits of smaller, less complex public companies. When it adopted Auditing Standard No.