The PCAOB has entered a new phase, similar to where it was in 2022: After threats to its existence, budget battles, salary cuts (that was new), close to wholesale replacement of the members and the chair, and intermittent signals of a new direction, it’s now laying out its grand plan.

In his prepared remarks for the USC SEC Reporting Conference on June 4, PCAOB chair Demetrios “Jim” Logothetis mapped changes to the board’s inspection program that would de-emphasize reviewing “a handful of audits in isolation” in favor of a more acute focus “on audit firms’ systems of quality control.”

“Today, we select a non-statistical sample of audits. We review those engagements, and from that limited set, we infer conclusions about a firm’s broader system of quality control with relatively limited direct testing of the system itself,” Logothetis said.

But that approach “does not provide a complete view of how a firm’s system actually operates, and it is not the most effective way to deliver on our core objective—protecting investors at scale.”

The board will “move toward a model where the primary focus of inspections is the firm’s system of quality control and where engagement-level work serves to corroborate how that system operates in practice,” Logothetis said. “This reflects a simple reality: Audit quality is produced by systems, not by isolated engagements.”

Logothetis lays it all out.—VR

Organizations are showing interest in stablecoins. But the next step—establishing a stablecoin strategy—requires finance to understand both how to use stablecoins and the best ways to manage them, experts told CFO Brew.

Translation: It’s time for CFOs to get their treasurers involved.

“Treasury typically plays a very big role, especially in the liquidity aspect” of an organization’s stablecoin program, according to Bob Stark, global head of market strategy with treasury management platform Kyriba.

Growing interest. Both research and anecdotal evidence suggest that finance leaders are at least intrigued by, if not already using, stablecoins.

A September EY-Parthenon survey of 350 corporate and financial services executives globally found that 13% of respondents already used stablecoins, while more than half (54%) expected to be using them in the next six to 12 months. Deloitte’s Q2 2025 CFO Signals survey of 200 North American finance executives found that 15% expected their companies would probably accept stablecoins as a payment method within two years.

But how do you move money in and out of them?—AZ

No, we’re not done talking about the “I” word quite yet. Today we learned that the inflation situation has gone from bad to worse:

• The Consumer Price Index report for May jumped 4.2% from a year ago. That’s the fastest pace inflation has accelerated in three years.
• Energy prices were the culprit, rising 3.9% over the month. Gas alone is up over 40% since last year.
• With food and energy prices removed, core inflation rose a tamer 2.9% annually, in line with expectations.

Economists were expecting inflation to climb because of the Iran war, which has spiked oil prices 35%. And unless the Iran conflict de-escalates quickly, “the broader and more persistent inflationary pressures are likely to become,” EY-Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco explained in a note this week.

This complicates the picture for the Federal Reserve. Right now, traders are betting the central bank will leave rates unchanged. “For a Federal Reserve already concerned about inflation persistence, another firm inflation report will strengthen the case for a more explicit two-sided reaction function,” Daco added.

But consumers are spending anyway, Brew Markets reports.—LB

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