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Accounting News Roundup: Conflict Minerals; Trump’s Charitable Donations; Deloitte vs. Iowa | 08.04.15

U.S. Firms Struggle to Trace ‘Conflict Minerals’ [CFOJ]
Automation can't solve this problem, at least: "In all, companies shelled out roughly $709 million and six million staff hours last year to comply with rules to disclose 'conflict minerals' in their supply chains, according to recent research by Tulane University and Assent Compliance, a New York consulting firm. And next year, they will need to hire auditors to evaluate their results."

New York Regulator Moves to Suspend Promontory Financial [NYT]
The Department of Financial Services wants to indefinitely suspend Promontory "from conducting most assignments for banks that are licensed in New York State and suspected of wrongdoing." This would be a far more severe penalty than those leveled at Deloitte and PwC. 

There's something fishy about Donald Trump's charitable donations [AP]
DJT claims to have donated $102 million in cash and land over the past 5 years. Not all that impressive for a billionaire who has described himself as an "ardent philanthropist." The AP reports that the campaign provided little evidence to support his claims and that he hasn't even donated to his own foundation since 2008.

Deloitte suing Iowa Board of Regents to keep records secret [The Gazette]
Deloitte believes their proposal, subject to an open records request, contains, "confidential, proprietary, trade secret information which would cause harm to Deloitte Consulting if publicly disclosed."

New KPMG leader eyes bigger presence for firm in Boston [BBJ]
Darren Donovan is shopping: "We’re still very acquisitive. In the technology space, we’re still very interested in things about Big Data, the cloud, these sorts of very specialized areas: machine-to-machine data processing, even robotics."

The US government reimbursed Buzz Aldrin $33 for his trip to the moon in 1969 [Quartz]
The submission was likely for, "the costs of having to drive his own car to and from Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas."