The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted unanimously to improve mutual fund disclosure by requiring that funds provide investors with a concise summary - in plain English - of the key information they need to make informed investment decisions. The new summary prospectus will appear at the front of a fund’s prospectus.

The Board for Actuarial Standards (BAS) received 38 responses to its discussion paper on Actuarial Mortality Assumptions. The BAS has now published an analysis of the responses, which generally indicated that the discussion paper had helped to stimulate debate and that it presented a balanced view.

The massive scale economic crisis has already made the government double its efforts in solving many problems stockpiled for years. Starting from January 1 2009, orientation of the whole system of taxation in Russia will be shifted towards business.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CYSEC) and the Federal Financial Markets Service. Vladimir Milovidov, chief of the FFMS, explained that the MoU provides both organizations with a possibility to acquire information from the opposite party on request.

US companies could be producing accounts under international rules in little more than a year, according to detailed plans produced by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite efforts by the G20 group of nations to accelerate changes to financial reporting, accounting standard-setters said they will continue their projects as planned in the next few months. “There’s a lot of things already under way”, - Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, said at the Current Financial Reporting Issues conference in New York on Monday.

Yesterday Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev confirmed three facts, until now denied by officials. He had to admit there was a crisis situation in Russia in general (1), in the real sector of its economy in particular (2), and that there was a massive unemployment threat (3). For the first time, Russian President disclosed the value of the anti-crisis aid: 5 trillion rubles – which won’t be enough to save the economy according to the opinion of some experts because the government still has to estimate the value of the anti-crisis aid specifically for the real sector industries.

The Ministry of Justice has registered the Minfin’s order, thus officially approving two Russia’s national accounting standards AS 1/2008 “Accounting policies” and AS 21/2008 “Changes in accounting estimates”. Those will be effective starting from January 1, 2009.

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) today announced that Hans Hoogervorst, Chairman of the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), the Dutch securities regulator and Harvey Goldschmid, former Commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) have agreed to co-chair the high-level advisory group formed to consider financial reporting issues arising from the global economic crisis.

Leaders of over 100 accountancy organizations worldwide met in Rome on November 11-14 to participate in the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) Board and Council meetings, where they addressed the global financial crisis, convergence to global auditing and ethics standards, and the profession’s role in sustainable development. At the conclusion of the meeting, President Robert Bunting of the United States assumed the IFAC Presidency for a two-year term ending in November 2010. Göran Tidström of Sweden assumed the position of Deputy President.