ABA yesterday warned the Financial Accounting Standards Board that a proposed change in accounting for stock options will subject a company’s earnings to the volatility of its stock price.

ABA today announced that John Kinsella has been named its new VP for tax policy. Kinsella joined ABA from U.S. Bancorp, where he was SVP and director of taxation.

As if audit committees (ACs) don’t have enough to worry about in the post Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) era, the SEC is inviting comments on a concept release paper that proposes various additional disclosures for them.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s latest effort to simplify accounting standards focuses on expenses related to stock option compensation. At first, the proposal appears very encouraging: companies will have the option to account for forfeitures as the options expire – that can make things easier.

Noting an environment of “high” credit, strategic, compliance and operational risk, the OCC outlined nine priorities for ongoing midsize and community bank supervision in its Semiannual Risk Perspective report released yesterday.

Following advocacy by ABA, state associations, bankers and other financial trade groups, a controversial revenue-raising provision in trade preferences bill H.R. 1295 was removed.

Despite regulators' action -- and ABA's lawsuit -- after the Volcker Rule to protect existing bank investments in trust preferred securities, community bankers are facing the same issue as the Basel III capital standards come into effect, ABA VP Hugh Carney wrote in an American Banker op-ed today.

The Justice Department announced last week that four banks — Société Générale Private Banking (Lugano-Svizzera), MediBank AG, LBBW (Schweiz) AG, and Scobag Privatbank AG — have reached resolutions under the department's Swiss Bank Program.

Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, banks have placed increased focus on internal audit. In response to member requests, ABA has formed peer groups for internal auditors and groups for those coordinating implementation of the updated COSO internal control framework.

ABA and several financial trade groups wrote to Congress yesterday opposing a revenue-raising provision in H.R. 1295, a trade preferences bill.