Corporate governance - Vigil

MONTREAL - After years of delays and cost overruns, Bombardier's CSeries commercial aircraft appears on the verge of being certified by Canada's transporta

This issue extracts key insights from this year's three-day AICPA Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments. The conference features speeches by, and question-and-answer sessions with, members of the SEC, PCAOB, FASB, IASB, and other professional groups on current accounting, reporting, and auditing practice issues.

Women have won five presidential elections in Latin America—an impressive feat. Yet much more still needs to be done to advance women's equality in the region. The economic benefits alone would be huge—by our calculations more than $1 trillion over the next decade. At a time when many Latin American economies are struggling, that’s too good a dividend to pass up, write Andres Cadena and Anu Madgavkar in Americas Quarterly. A McKinsey Global Institute article.

Today [December 11, 2015], the Commission considers new rules that are designed to protect investors by addressing the use of derivatives by registered investment companies. As demonstrated by the 2008 financial crisis, and the economic turmoil that followed, years of regulatory complacency and deregulation enabled an unregulated derivatives marketplace to cause significant losses to investors. In response to that crisis, in 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to address the causes of the financial crisis, and specifically included provisions in Title VII of the Act mandating the establishment of a regulatory framework for addressing broad categories of derivatives. This process is still ongoing.

Today [December 11, 2015], we are considering a proposed new exemptive rule that addresses the use of derivatives and financial commitment transactions by registered investment companies and business development companies (collectively, “funds”). This proposal is the third in a series of initiatives aimed at ensuring that the Commission’s regulatory program fully addresses the increasingly complex portfolio composition and operations of the asset management industry.

In two previous posts,[1] I described the financial industry’s “single point of entry” (SPOE) strategy for resolving failed megabanks. The SPOE approach – which has been endorsed by the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) and other regulators – could be implemented under the Orderly Liquidation Au...

This Heads Up summarizes the November 12–13, 2015, meeting of the PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group (SAG). At the meeting, the PCAOB gave an update on recent developments, including an overview of its current and future standard-setting activities. In addition, SAG members participated in separate breakout sessions on audit quality indicators (AQIs) and emerging issues that could affect audits, auditors, or the PCAOB. The PCAOB staff also discussed the status of the Board’s project on using the work of specialists, and the SAG responded to a series of questions posed by PCAOB staff.

The high cost of gender inequality has been documented extensively. But a new study by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that it is even higher than previously thought—with far-reaching consequences, write Laura Tyson and Anu Madgavkar in Project Syndicate. A McKinsey Global Institute article.

The Commission will consider two separate recommendations from the staff today [December 11, 2015]. First, we will consider and vote on a recommendation from the staff of the Division of Investment Management to propose an updated and more comprehensive approach to the use of derivatives by mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and business development companies.