President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law.
The act, which was approved by the House on June 30 before narrowly clearing the Senate last week, will create new regulations for companies that extend credit to consumers, exempt small public companies from Sarbanes-Oxley section 404(b), make auditors of broker-dealers subject to PCAOB regulation and change registration requirements for investment advisers (see “ Financial Regulatory Reform Bill Clears Congress”).
The CPA profession successfully advocated for CPAs on a number of issues, including protections to maintain FASB’s independence and inclusion of a provision to ensure permanent funding for GASB, and resisted duplicative regulation by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for CPAs’ usual and customary activities.
“The profession came together on this legislation to ensure that Congress recognized that CPAs are already appropriately regulated to protect the public,” said AICPA Chairman Robert R. Harris in a statement to the JofA. “The advocacy work done by the CPA profession, including the AICPA, state societies, firms and individual members was a great testament to the power of the profession’s voice, and it cemented the regard that Capitol Hill has for CPAs.”
A White House video available here highlights key provisions of the new law.
In the coming weeks and months, the JofA and AICPA technical groups will be preparing detailed coverage of the law, which includes lesser-known provisions as far reaching as investor financial literacy and corporate whistleblower protections.
—Matthew G. Lamoreaux ( mlamoreaux@aicpa.org ) is a JofA senior editor.
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