Columbia Law School
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Good morning. This is an open meeting of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, under the Government in the Sunshine Act.
Today, we have six items on the agenda. As I’ve remarked in the past, we must efficiently allocate the
PCAOB
How Do Auditors Determine What’s Material?
U.S. public company audits all include a simple step to determine whether an amount is large or significant for their clients, otherwise known as materiality. This decision influences the planning and procedures of the other facets of the audit as …
Do Investors Care Who Did the Audit?
In 2008, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession called for a “standard-setting initiative to consider mandating the engagement partner’s signature on the auditor’s report” as a way to increase audit transparency.[1] The Public …
The Revolving Door between the PCAOB and Large Audit Firms
In a recent study, we examine the flow of workers between the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and large U.S. audit firms. The PCAOB, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, oversees the audits of public companies by, among …
Financial Misreporting: Hiding in the Shadows or in Plain Sight?
It’s widely assumed that executives are less likely to inflate earnings at high profile companies under a good deal of regulatory oversight. And yet it’s also widely known that managers in high profile companies have an incentive to overstate their …
How Economic Conditions Affect Auditors’ Judgment
Auditor judgment and technical competence are central to audits, and a lack of those qualities has led to many audit deficiencies, according to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), the UK’s Financial Reporting Council (FRC), and other regulators around …
Paul Weiss Discusses Roadmap of Non-GAAP Financial Measures for Audit Committees
On March 16, 2018, the Center for Audit Quality (the “CAQ”) published Non-GAAP Financial Measures: A Roadmap for Audit Committees[1] (the “Roadmap”) to provide guidance to audit committees on advancing their oversight and involvement with non-GAAP financial measures. The …
Materiality Disclosures and Their Effect on Investors’ Decisions
Auditors consider misstatements or omissions in financial statements to be material if they could influence the economic decisions of financial statement users. Additionally, materiality affects how auditors plan and perform an audit and evaluate identified misstatements. Regulators in the UK …
Gibson Dunn Updates Securities Litigation for First Half of 2017
The first half of 2017 brought with it a nearly unprecedented rate of new filings (a pace few predicted), as well as several important developments in the securities laws. Among other things, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to weigh in …
The Legacy of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 15 Years On
“What does Sarbanes-Oxley mean? That’s when two members of U.S. Congress fiddle and half a million accountants in Europe start dancing.”[1]
President Donald Trump pledged during his electoral campaign to repeal some of the reforms that came about …
Making Sense of Corporate Governance in U.S. Firms
Corporate governance has become even more important since the collapse of major firms in the 1990s and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, and the relationship between financial reporting and the capital markets is a big reason why. The debate …
Are Voluntary Internal Controls-Related Audit Report Disclosures Informative in IPOs?
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires management and auditors to opine on the effectiveness of internal controls for many public companies. One intention of SOX is to improve the reliability of information public companies provide to the financial markets …
Backstabbing in Washington: The Curious Case of the PCAOB
Washington is a strange town! The more you succeed, the more you attract enemies. If you outperform all prior occupants of your office, behave like a model gentleman, and achieve what no one thought possible, that will make you a …