Shareholders who collectively own 3% of a company's stock for at least 3 years now have more power in electing and nominating board members. This was announced last Thursday by the SEC, making it easier for shareholders to nominate and elect board members.

The new "proxy access" rules will require companies to include the names of the nominated board members from these significant shareholders (own 3% for at least 3 consecutive years) alongside the names of nominees from the management team and include both sets of names on the company's proxy materials.

The FASB Chairman, Robert Herz, decided he was going to retire on Oct. 1, 2010 even though he had two more years left to serve.

Many people are surprised by this news because it seemed to come out of nowhere.

Many are concerned that his departure may slow down the convergence project of converging two accounting standards and the ultimate IFRS adoption in the U.S. While FASB replaces its chairman Mr. Herz, IASB will also be replacing it chairman, David Tweedie, next June 2011.

CFO.com recently posted an article Revenue Rules Could Cause Software Snags which discusses how the new revenue rules could cause ERP vendors some headaches trying to retrofit their software to be compliant with the new standards. Our resident accounting expert, Seamus Moran, is even quoted in this article.

I spoke with Seamus to better understand the new Revenue Recognition rules and this is what he had to say:

Oracle iReceipts is an iPhone application for Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Expenses.
Watch the YouTube video.

To learn more, see iReceipts.