Before the end of summer commercial banks in Ukraine will have to inform the National Bank (NBU) on their plans to raise regulatory capital to required 120 million hryvnas (≈15 million USD). Smaller financial institutions, although still complaining on never-ending changers in regulation, are nonetheless planning to pump funds into their capital. If some of them fail, they will have to merge, search for investors, or leave.

The report from Korn/Ferry International and the Institute of Internal Auditors’ Audit Executive Center indicates that today’s chief audit executives need broader experience, more business acumen and other key leadership skills to be effective in this dynamic economic environment.

Freed from the threat of the Supreme Court putting it out of business, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has decided to start flexing its muscles. The board issued a quick succession of announcements in a single day last week, including new and stricter risk assessment standards, plans to impose more sanctions on accounting firms and managers that don’t adequately supervise their staff, and the intention to ask Congress to allow the board to make its disciplinary proceedings and hearings public.

Starting form 2014, the Ministry of Finance wants to cancel the single (uniform) tax on imputed income because the whole experience of this approach to taxation proved ineffective.

The Federal Reserve announced this Tuesday that it would reinvest $150 billion of funds from maturing bonds to additionally repurchase the government debt. It’s a small, but quite significant step in economic policy, but investors were surely hoping for something more significant.

The US could be stripped of any influence over global financial rules if it does not adopt them itself, the head of the international accounting standard setter has warned. Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), believes US influence on standard setting may diminish if it rejects international accounting rules next year.

The acting chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has asked his staff to develop a proposal for Congress that would allow the private regulatory body to make its disciplinary hearings and related proceedings public.

Starting from the beginning of 2011 safety margin of Russian banks – which is the ratio of shareholders capital to debt – will be estimated by the Central Bank with application of the so-called “leverage ratio”, which is something new for Russian practice, but is quite common in the rest of the world.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new reward system for whistleblowing against banks from Wall-Street – informs BFM.RU with a reference to The Financial Times.

Audit firms that engage in shady accounting practices or financial fraud face a growing risk of being turned in – by their own staff accountants and by the internal auditors of their public company clients.