Panel targets auditor rules

Jeannine Aversa

Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002 | 10 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A presidential panel on improving corporate financial disclosure in the wake of the Enron bankruptcy is looking at the issue of who should set accounting standards, a top Treasury official said.

"That's going to be one of the issues that the president's working group is going to have on its plate," Peter Fisher, undersecretary of Treasury in charge of domestic finance, said today. "I don't want to step out in front of the decision."

Specifically, Fisher, in a question-and-answer session at a state treasurers conference, was asked whether the accounting industry, Congress or regulators should set accounting standards.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, he said, already has considerable authority and could be setting accounting standards, including those affecting professional responsibility

Fisher said the presidential group, which includes officials from the SEC, Treasury and the Federal Reserve, is "doing a lot of work trying to sort through what the scope of existing statutory authority is. My intuition and my gut tells me there is quite a bit of it."

But he added: "That doesn't mean there aren't some changes that should be made. I think we all feel that we can do a better job than we've been doing on the disclosure."

Fisher, speaking to the National Association of State Treasurers, also said the working group probably will look at the role of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, an organization that establishes standards of financial accounting and reporting.

The working group is supposed to make recommendations to President Bush on improving corporate disclosure of financial information to the public and to investors.

Fisher was one of several top Bush administration officials who received phone calls from Enron executives last fall as the company was collapsing. Fisher and other administration officials said they took no action to help Enron. The company filed for bankruptcy in December, the largest in U.S. history.