APB clamps down on accounts manipulation
Tackling aggressive earnings management is to be the UK auditing standard setter's main priority, it emerged yesterday.
Link: Read a profile of APB chairman Ian Plaistowe
A consultation paper on its work programme put out for discussion this week has at the top of its list aggressive earnings management and business empires.
They are the two areas of auditing that have come into the spotlight following recent corporate scandals in the US.
The Auditing Practices Board, headed by Ian Plaistowe, said it plans to update guidance on fraud, materiality and the audit of accounting estimates as a priority. It also urged accountancy bodies and firms ‘to give increased emphasis to the need for professional scepticism and to underpin auditing standards with post-qualification training’.
Plans to update a single set of auditing rules to be used around the world will mean the APB will have to work much closer with the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, the IAASB, over the next few years.
Plaistowe said he would ensure the quality of UK and Irish audit rules were not ‘diluted’.