The latest news about Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., suggesting the need for restatements of recent periods’ financial statements, albeit with limited details reported thus far, again focuses attention on the common matter of the possible abuse of revenue recognition accounting principles.

It has become commonplace to decry the dearth of talented individuals willing to serve on corporate board audit committees and to speculate on the need to make such appointments more attractive to the right mix of financially literate individuals.

There has been a great deal of public debate regarding the U.S. corporate tax rate and the impact it has on tax compliance, so-called tax inversions, and economic policy, and inevitably some of this has had strong political coloration.

Once more a massive accounting fraud is galvanizing critics of corporate governance, both here and abroad, this time engagingly illuminated by the elaborately choreographed resignation of three top Toshiba Corporation executives following disclosure of a $1.2 billion profit overstatement reportedly occurring over a seven year period.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article (“The 109,894-Word Annual Report,” June 2, 2015), the fact that corporate annual reports on Form 10-K have expanded by some 40% over just the four-year interval 2010-2013, to an average count of 42,000 words, was bemoaned, with General Electric’s headlined filing cited as perhaps a record-setting example. T

Revenue frauds have long been among the most popular forms of financial reporting manipulations. The SEC, for example, has traditionally identified revenue recognition infractions as being either the top or the second most common variety of the management and accounting frauds it has had to pursue.

Courts are increasingly treating accountants as fiduciaries, creating significant risk that they -- and their insurers -- may not realize they face.