Auditing

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issues a briefing paper describing its plans for overseeing—in cooperation with appropriate auditing regulators in other countries—the activities of U.S. accounting firms fully or partially responsible for auditing public companies in a foreign jurisdiction ( www.pcaobus.org/rules/Release2003-020.pdf ). The paper also described the board’s vision of a reciprocal arrangement it seeks with foreign regulators for the oversight of non-U.S. accounting firms auditing American companies. The PCAOB said such joint efforts will protect investors by improving participating nations’ audit quality and corporate reporting, minimizing unnecessary overlaps in their regulations and costs and allocating resources more efficiently.