Securities and Exchange Commissioner Paul Atkins recently told several
In July, the SEC approved the risk-based Audit Standard 5 from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which companies hadcomplained was unnecessarily time consuming and inefficient. According to WebCPA, Atkins says the newstandard to force changes on auditors as they try to comply with section 404 ofSarbanes-Oxley on auditing internal controls at companies.
“If auditing fees do not come down as a result of thesechanges, then something is terribly wrong with the interpretation of AuditStandard 5 and perhaps with the competitive landscape in the auditingprofession itself,” WebCPA quotes Atkins in saying in a speech before theAmerican Chamber of Commerce last week in