Chris Cox goes before the Senate

Chris Cox was questioned by the senate yesterday and the big news (at least to an accountant) was his statement that he would support the FASB's stock option standard. This is from the Jurist:


Corporations and securities brief ~ SEC nominee Cox grilled by Senate committee
James Murdock

[JURIST] Leading Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, President Bush's nominee to head the SEC, Rep. Christopher Cox [congressional profile], told the Senate Banking Committee [official website] Tuesday that he would vigorously enforce securities laws. Cox also pledged to enforce the controversial Financial Accounting Standards Board [official website] (FASB) rule requiring companies to count stock options given to employees as a business expense. As a congressman, Cox had introduced a bill intended to limit the SEC's power to force companies to comply with the rule.

Google's stock option accounting

There is a very good article in the WSJ today (subscription required) by David Gaffen about Google's quarterly reporting and share based compensation expense. I have written about this before here . My own view is that Google is purposely confusing the situation in order that amount of the company's going forward stock option expense is difficult to calculate, Why because the number is very large.

However, I do not think that analysts fully understand what is going on with the two types of option expense that Google has and how they have amortized out the pre-ipo intrinsic expense.

Becoming an accountant sure used to be easy!

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