AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48.5 Billion in Move to Expand Clout [DealBook]
Why wouldn't Telecom company want a satellite TV provider? "By acquiring the country’s biggest satellite television operator, AT&T would gain more clout in negotiating with media companies as it increasingly focuses on video offerings. Through the deal, AT&T would become the country’s second-biggest pay TV provider, behind only Comcast. AT&T has about 5.7 million TV customers through its U-verse service, while the satellite TV operator has about 20.3 million customers in the United States."
No more foreign auditors? [China Accounting Blog]
Paul Gillis writes that Chinese regulators "are cracking down on Hong Kong firms coming into China to do audits." This after he suspected last week that Alibaba auditor, PwC, was signing off from HK despite mainland auditors performing a large portion of the job: "Based on Alibaba’s risk disclosures, it appears that the PwC was using mainland staff for a significant part of the audit. This proposed rule will simply make sure they do that, and will likely mean that PwC Zhong Tian instead of PwC Hong Kong signs the audit report."
The Rolls-Royce of Audit Reports Hits The Road: Test-Driving KPMG’s Latest Model [Re:Balance]
Finally! An auditor's report that has meat to it! But Jim Peterson isn't sure anyone cares: "The interesting question is whether the world was really waiting for essays of 500-word-length on such eye-crossingly complicated topics as revenue and profit measurement, measurement of liabilities from sales financing arrangements, or the concept and presentation of non-standard “underlying” profit on foreign transactions. Or would information users have preferred the traditional, simple and comfortable anodyne opinion in the first paragraph, that a 'true and fair view' was presented?"
AstraZeneca Rejects ‘Final’ Offer by Pfizer [DealBook]
AZ sees your game, Viagra chucker: "Leif Johansson, the AstraZeneca chairman, said in a statement that Pfizer’s pursuit all along 'appears to have been fundamentally driven by the corporate financial benefits to its shareholders of cost savings and tax minimization.' "
NYSSCPA Installs 95th President [AT]
Scott Adair loves being a CPA and thinks you don't make enough noise about it: " 'Being a CPA means everything to me,' he said, noting that it took him 12 years of hard work to pass the exam. 'We don’t toot our horn enough. We are quietly competent individuals. We need to make sure that people know who were are. We are a talented group; let’s get out their and toot our own horns.' "
The Wild West of “Nonauthoritative” GAAP [Accounting Onion]
Tom Selling provides a brief case study of GAAP that isn't really GAAP but everyone treats at GAAP.
Boy Pulls Off The Smoothest Foul Ball Trick To Impress Girl Behind Him [Deadspin]
There are some life lessons here.