With the new entity accounting for 25% of English-language book sales, the merger is sure to get a long, hard look from anti-trust regulators.

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McDonough, a former executive of First Chicago, did a 10-year stint as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before becoming the first chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a U.S. regulatory entity overseeing the accounting profession, in 2003.

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McDonough, a former executive of First Chicago, did a 10-year stint as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (nyse: BK - news - people ) before becoming the first chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, a U.S. regulatory entity overseeing the accounting profession, in 2003.

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That board has explicitly rejected stewardship with its implicit notion of incidence in favour of what it calls an entity-based approach to accounting.

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At the end of the emission accounting period (usually year-end) each entity with a compliance obligation will need to hold allowances that are at least the same in number as its actual emissions for the period.

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The SEC alleges that JMA is not registered or licensed as an accounting firm, and that its website was paid for by a Murray-controlled entity.

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All this is especially troubling, because financial firms will be keen to get into businesses from which they were previously excluded and quickly, because an accounting trick known as pooling of interest, which flatters the profits of the merged entity, will be scrapped at the end of next year.

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