Amy Rojik, national managing partner, corporate governance at BDO, participated in a video interview in conjunction with Nareit’s REITwise: 2023 Law, Accounting & Finance Conference held March 21-23 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Addressing the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) current standard setting agenda, Rojik said it’s all about modernizing the standards.
“Holding auditors accountable for their own systems equality is a big focus in terms of ethics and dependence in the longer term, in considering firm engagement level performance metrics,” she said.
She added that most of the agenda is industry agnostic, but one item that may be of interest to REITs and commercial real estate is digital assets and “the ease in which such assets can help in transactions.” Other PCAOB agenda items that might be hot-button items for REITs that Rojik mentioned were management’s ability to forecast the future in light of the changes over the last several years as well as fraud.
Rojik also discussed a number of key topics that she sees audit committees focused on this year, including increased activity with IPO, M&A activities, widespread supply chain disruption, the continued effects of COVID, fluctuations in interest rates, and inflationary trends.