| 
Results for sarbanesoxley. Search took 0.31 seconds.
Sarbanes-Oxley: It's crunch time for small companies
in Sox First, on January 28, 2009
It looks like the honeymoon is over for small companies. Incoming Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Schapiro says she wants small public businesses to start complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirement that companies' internal controls be audited to ensure that their...
Lawyers take to boardrooms
in Sox First, on August 28, 2008
We have talked many times about how Sarbanes-Oxley has turned into a goldmine for accountants. The other lot that's made big gains are the lawyers. Sarbanes-Oxley means we're now seeing more lawyers in the boardroom, reports Law.com . Because of the increasingly litigious environment, ...
Why firms left the US market
in Sox First, on August 14, 2008
It's often claimed that some firms delisted from the US market because of Sarbanes-Oxley. But a new study says that's not true. The Fisher College of Business study, Why do foreign firms leave US equity markets? , found that foreign companies got hammered when they left the US market...
Does Sarbanes-Oxley make fraud worse?
in Sox First, on July 23, 2008
That's the fascinating question raised in a new Association of Certified Fraud Examiners report . First of all, the report finds that despite the purported intentions of Sarbanes-Oxley to increase focus on fraud controls, the evidence suggests that frauds are much more likely to be detecte...
Trouble handling risk
in Sox First, on July 3, 2008
When Sarbanes-Oxley was introduced nearly six years ago, it was supposed to improve the way audit committees and companies handled risk. Think again. Most companies are struggling to deal with risk, let alone understand it, according to a new report from KPMG . KPMG found that just about one ...
Sarbanes-Oxley boosts shredding business
in Sox First, on July 2, 2008
Plenty has been written about Sarbanes-Oxley being a licence to print money for accountants. But it's also done wonderful things for the shredding business, according to this news report . Since Sarbanes-Oxley, and various other laws, the shredding business has been growing at about...
No SOX relief in sight
in Sox First, on June 24, 2008
For the fifth time, the Securities and Exchange Commission has decided to give smaller companies another year stay of grace before complying with the audit requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. But don't take that as a sign that the lawmakers will start rolling SOX back. The smart money is on t...
CEOs hate SOX
in Sox First, on June 23, 2008
It's hardly news but almost six years on, and corporate America still hates Sarbanes-Oxley. According to the National Survey of CEOs on Business Ethics, by Georgia State's Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility and Clemson's Robert J. Rutland Institute for Ethics, rep...
CFOs' road to the top
in Sox First, on June 2, 2008
Everyone knows that Sarbanes-Oxley has been a gold-mine for accountants. Now we have new evidence that it's also done a lot of good for chief financial officers. According to a study, finance chiefs are the ones most likely to get the top jobs in companies, reports The Economist . In 2005,...
SOX and CFO exits
in Sox First, on May 29, 2008
Tough being a chief financial officer these days, post-Sarbanes-Oxley. It seems that CFOs of firms that have had to restate their numbers are more likely to be shown the door and a university of arkansas study, reported here . Not only that, they had more trouble finding a job after the...
SOX and backdating
in Sox First, on April 11, 2008
Much has been said about Sarbanes-Oxley stopping backdating. But is that true? Has it actually improved corporate governance? Under Sarbanes-Oxley, all high-level executive stock option grants and exercises made on or after August 29, 2002 have be reported within two business days. Before Augus...
Biovail's fraud and SOX
in Sox First, on March 27, 2008
Drugmaker Biovail's $10 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle some seriously bad fraud charges makes fascinating reading. And it's a lesson for anyone who thought Sarbanes-Oxley was going to stop fraud. It also tells us that the SEC is one big lumbering...
SOX and the Bear deal
in Sox First, on March 19, 2008
So a new survey commissioned by the Center for Audit Quality has found that most audit committee members believe audit quality is superior post-Sarbanes Oxley. According to the survey, 53 percent of the audit committee members said overall audit quality was "very good,'' and anothe...
Subprime's parallels with Enron and WorldCom: Michael Oxley and Paul Sarbanes
in Sox First, on March 15, 2008
The subprime crisis has some eerie parallels with Enron and WorldCom, say the two Sarbox co-authors. In an interview with the Indian media , they say what's needed is more regulation. Sarbanes-Oxley-style. "One of the tenets of our Act was transparency. Clearly, one of the problems wi...
No reduction in Section 404 controls
in Sox First, on March 5, 2008
Welcome to the nightmare. The biggest gripe about Section 404 controls is that they will not get easier and will not reduce over time. No matter how long companies have to get used to it. Now five years into Sarbanes-Oxley and it looks like those concerns are justified. A new survey of 300 compa...
Criminalizing capitalism: Sarbanes-Oxley and the latest crisis
in Sox First, on February 15, 2008
Thought provoking piece Criminalizing Capitalism from Nicole Gelinas on the limitations of Sarbanes-Oxley. Gelinas makes the point that Sarbanes-Oxley not only failed to stop the subprime meltdown with the big banks miscalculating and mismanaging key risks and investor confidence crushed. She ...
SEC buys time for small companies
in Sox First, on February 4, 2008
Another sign that the Securities and Exchange Commission is pulling back from Sarbanes-Oxley. On Friday, the SEC announced that it's giving yet another delay to the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley to smaller public companies. And not only won't the small companies have to comply with ...
The Section 404 Effect
in Sox First, on January 17, 2008
With Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox last month announcing a one-year delay in imposing Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 requirements for small public companies - something that would buy the SEC time to finish a study into compliance costs (as if nobody already knows) -...
Easing up on corporate crime
in Sox First, on December 16, 2007
Earlier this year, I did a blog entry explaining that the fight against corporate wrongdoing always eases up when there is a stock market bubble. The Economist confirms that argument in the piece Going easy on corporate crime . It says there are several reasons why the pendulum has swu...
Charities and governance
in Sox First, on December 5, 2007
On one reading, not-for-profit have really lifted their governance since the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley. According to Grant Thornton's fifth annual National Board Governance Survey for Not-for-Profit Organizations , 75 percent of not-fot-profits say their organization has a code-of-et...
Learning the Sarbox ropes
in Sox First, on November 30, 2007
Earlier this month, I did a blog entry explaining why Sarbanes-Oxley was unlikely to get overhauled in the near future. Simply put, businesses and auditors are getting used to it and getting rid of it, or at least changing it, doesn't play politically when you have a war, health care costs ...
SOX squeezes supply chains
in Sox First, on November 26, 2007
The supply chain is never the sexiest of topics. But it's become absolutely critical in a global economy where consumers have more power and where pressures for accountability are growing. So what impact has it had on supply chains. But what impact has Sarbanes-Oxley had on supply chains? Giv...
Beyond the SOX shock?
in Sox First, on November 16, 2007
Interesting data coming out suggests that Sarbanes-Oxley is unlikely to be overhauled. That's despite the jury still out on its effectiveness. But a study released last week by Protiviti has found that companies are now refocusing their emphasis in the post-SOX era, returning to more tra...
Disclosure by law = less disclosure: the SOX effect
in Sox First, on November 6, 2007
When Sarbanes-Oxley was introduced in 2002, it was supposed to enhance investor protection by improving the quality of information and increasing the transparency of corporations. Now a new study has found it's had the opposite effect on the quality of information. The study, The Impact of ...
SOX campaign
in Sox First, on October 28, 2007
Hat tip to my mates at Audit Trail who have pointed out that Sarbanes-Oxley has emerged as an issue in the run-up to the presidential elections. Over in one corner, we have reports of GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani saying that he wants to change Sarbanes-Oxley, and calling the law "an o...
SOX squashing innovation
in Sox First, on October 11, 2007
Last year I raised the question: Is Sarbanes-Oxley choking innovation? . The fundamental issue here is whether SOX is encouraging inaction over action and paralysis by analysis. Added to this debate is a new paper Innovation and Corporate Governance:
The Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley by Houman B ...
Buried treasure, corporate pirates and Sarbanes-Oxley
in Sox First, on October 9, 2007
Sarbanes-Oxley has limited impact because its penalties are relatively weak when compared to other statutes, says Lisa Nicholson , Associate Professor of Law at the University of Louisville. In her paper, The culture of under-enforcement: buried treasure, Sarbanes-Oxley and the corporate pirat...
Audit committee and SOX
in Sox First, on October 6, 2007
Will they recommend changes to Sarbanes-Oxley or not? That's the million dollar question with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson announcing the make-up of the Treasury Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession . Some pretty high powered names in there so it's worth watching this...
SOX pay for lawyers and accountants
in Sox First, on September 21, 2007
The rigorous compliance environment in the United States following Sarbanes-Oxley has turned into a real money spinner for attorneys. According to the 2007 Altman Weil Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey , pay packages for lawyers rose sharply with bonuses going up by as much as 43 ...
10 limitations of rules and laws
in Sox First, on September 18, 2007
Just finished Dov Seidman's book How . Apart from his views on the challenges facing business today, the most fascinating parts were his insights into why imposing stronger laws like Sarbanes-Oxley will get us nowhere. Seidman argues that in this highly connected world of blogs, web sites an...
Beancounter bonanza
in Sox First, on September 7, 2007
For the last two years, I have been talking about how Sarbanes-Oxley has been a licence to print money for the accounting profession. Examples are here and here . And now the latest Rosenberg MAP survey, reported here , shows the trend continues, onwards and upwards. For the big firms, fees...
Audit squeeze
in Sox First, on August 24, 2007
I have long maintained that Sarbanes-Oxley has been a licence to print money for accountants. If you needed any further evidence, these findings from the Corporate Library reported here are further confirmation. According to that piece of research, median fees earned by the world's top au...
SOX compliance down but costs up
in Sox First, on August 7, 2007
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs might have levelled off but other costs are increasing at a fierce rate, according to a survey released by lawyers Foley & Lardner . Costs have gone up because of increases in audit and legal fees and a need to pay corporate directors more. "It is impo...
Employees identify ethics gaps
in Sox First, on August 2, 2007
Five years after Sarbanes-Oxley was signed into law to clean up corporate America's ethics , and we have some disturbing finds from the Ethics Resource Center. An Ethics Resource Center study, reported here , reveals that nearly 70 per cent of employees at publicly traded U.S. com...
Investors back Sarbanes-Oxley
in Sox First, on August 1, 2007
sarbanes -Oxley has been slated by business, lawyers and accountants. Not without some justification. But what about the people the law was supposedly brought in to protect? According to two surveys, most investors says it's boosted their confidence. More importantly, they don't want...
SOX birthday: five years and accounting
in Sox First, on July 17, 2007
At the beginning of the month, I did a blog entry looking at the fifth anniversary of Sarbanes-Oxley. To mark the occasion, CFO Europe has released a survey showing that three out of four US CFOs and six out of 10 European CFOs want the Act reformed or repealed. Not that that's going to...
Michael Oxley: effects of SOX are overstated
in Sox First, on July 6, 2007
In recent months, I have looked at how Sarbanes-Oxley's co-writer Michael Oxley has joined a law firm to help companies get around Sarbox, taken on another paid gig at Nasdaq and blamed the problems with SOX on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Now in an interview wi...
SOX and bubbles
in Sox First, on July 3, 2007
With Enron and WorldCom fading from memory and their perpetrators behind bars, the members of the Securities and Exchange Commission are being accused of tilting toward business interests and away from investors. But is that inevitable? It might well be, according to a paper from Washington DC...
SOX birthday "celebrations"
in Sox First, on July 2, 2007
It's party time. July marks the fifth anniversary of the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley and preparations are underway to mark the occasion. The Center for Audit Quality has announced it's holding a panel discussion and luncheon July 30 at the National Press Club in Washington. And Audi...
SOX drives up directors fees
in Sox First, on June 15, 2007
Sarbanes-Oxley might have made boards larger and more independent but it's also made them more expensive. A University of Georgia study, which drew on data of more than 8000 firms of various sizes between 1989 and 2005, found that the legislation had the effect of increasing director pay by...
SOX fails another whistleblower test
in Sox First, on June 11, 2007
If we needed any further evidence that Sarbanes-Oxley was of not much use to whistleblowers, it came last week when the first person to win whistleblower protection under SOX ended up losing his case. In 2004, David Welch, the former CFO of Virginia bank Cardinal Bancshares, became the first pe...
SOX compliance: time's up for small companies
in Sox First, on June 6, 2007
The Securities and Exchange Commission looks like holding firm to its December 15 deadline for small public companies to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, reports the Los Angeles Times . More reprieves are unlikely with the SEC now expecting that new guidelines and rules has given com...
Whistleblower incentives?
in Sox First, on May 29, 2007
Earlier this year, I did a blog entry looking at how Sarbanes-Oxley was close to useless in protecting whistleblowers. So how do solve the problem? One school of thought is to provide financial incentives for SOX whistleblowers. Geoffrey Rapp, assistant professor of University of Toledo Col...
Audit rules eased
in Sox First, on May 28, 2007
After years of pressure, chest-beating and hand-wringing from business, not to mention heat coming from Congress and the Bush administration, the board that polices auditors has finally relaxed its contentious standard for auditing public companies. The new eased-back standard for Section 404, ...
Compliance costs down but more work to be done
in Sox First, on May 17, 2007
Mixed news coming out from Financial Executives International showing that Section 404 compliance costs with Sarbanes-Oxley are headed south. Well, kind of. According to the press release , total average costs for compliance with Section 404 was $2.9 million for fiscal year 2006, down 23 per...
Why Sarbanes-Oxley is not sending companies to London
in Sox First, on May 2, 2007
At the end of last year, we had the Hank Paulson-backed Interim Report of the Committee for Capital Markets Regulation recommending watering down Sarbanes-Oxley. I looked at that here . Then earlier this year, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and US Senator Charles Schumer released a re...
Senate rejects move to weaken Sarbanes-Oxley
in Sox First, on April 26, 2007
By a vote of 62-35, the US Senate has rejected an attempt to water down Sarbanes-Oxley . The move to neutralise Sarbox was done through the back door, in the form of an amendment put up Republican Jim DeMint who tried attaching it to a bill that was aimed at boosting investment in research, an...
SOX scam warning
in Sox First, on April 23, 2007
Scam-meisters are now resorting to Sarbanes-Oxley. The financial accounting Standards Board (FASB) has put up a warning about companies getting calls from bogus salesman claiming they work for the FASB and promoting the sale of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance books. The FASB says it has not...
Michael Oxley: Sarbox sucks? Blame the PCAOB
in Sox First, on April 9, 2007
Just last month, I did blog entries on former Congressman and SOX co-writer Michael Oxley joining a law firm to help companies get around Sarbanes-Oxley and then joining Nasdaq . Now he's come out in an interview claiming he's not happy with the way Sarbanes-Oxley has been implemen...
Mending SOX - more work ahead
in Sox First, on April 6, 2007
As expected, the Securities and Exchange Commission this week moved to finalise guidelines for companies and auditors to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. This is supposed to mark the final stage of easing the burden of the 2002 law, changes that were flagged months ago. The aim of the exercise is to...
SEC-PCAOB arm wrestle on accounting rules
in Sox First, on April 4, 2007
Nearly five years after Sarbanes-Oxley was brought in, US regulators are still trying to sort out how much testing accountants will have to do in corporate audits. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the public company Accounting Oversight Board are grappling with the problem of h...
Are You Mastering Your Data?
in On Storage, on April 3, 2007
It's called Master Data Management (MDM), or Reference Data Management, a discipline of IT that manages the shared data across several disparate architectures, groups and systems. These systems share the same data - customer, product, vendor and other information relevant to more than one ar...
Interview with Barney Frank
in Sox First, on March 30, 2007
The mid-term elections turned Barney Frank into the most important and powerful legislators in the US. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, his views carry some weight. His perspectives on the future of Sarbanes-Oxley, and other key issues including litigation and the s...
Clawbacks: how to recover the money
in Sox First, on March 23, 2007
Last year I did a blog entry looking at the limitations of Sarbanes-Oxley when it comes to clawing back cash bonuses and stock awards from executives whose fraud or misdeeds had resulted in a disastrous financial restatement. Now, J. Mark Poerio and Crescent A. Moran from the law firm Paul, H...
SEC's Cox says SOX should be fixed, not wiped
in Sox First, on March 16, 2007
The US Chamber of Commerce might have come out with its plan to water down Sarbanes-Oxley but Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox has told them they're dreaming. In his speech delivered at their summit, Cox has said the only thing that might need changing is the ...
Markets in turmoil but red tape rollback push continues
in Sox First, on March 14, 2007
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! The slowly unfolding disaster of the subprime lending industry hits US stocks and markets worldwide , but the Bush administration and CEOs seem to think the real problem with the US economy is regulation. Go figure! The drive to water down Sarbanes-Oxle...
The reach of Sarbanes-Oxley: no-one's safe
in Sox First, on March 7, 2007
In early 2006, I did a blog entry looking at how Sarbanes-Oxley may have figured in the Plamegate affair. Simply put, the Act's broad definition of obstructing justice by destroying or concealing documents related to "the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States&...
Moving on: CFO departure lounge
in Sox First, on February 28, 2007
Last week, I looked at the issue of CFOs leaving companies in record numbers . Clearly the trend will escalate this year. More of the same, but worse. But what's driving this trend? CFOs are blaming it on Sarbanes-Oxley. They reckon the legislation has turned the job into the crumm...
Sarbanes-Oxley: no deterrent to IPOs
in Sox First, on February 22, 2007
Politicians and Wall Street are howling that the US is losing its financial edge because of Sarbanes-Oxley. The law, we have been told, is causing the world's leading companies to shun Wall Street and US capital markets. We've had the McKinsey report, released by US Senator Charl...
Stop tweaking SOX, says PCAOB
in Sox First, on February 20, 2007
Hopes of more changes to Sarbanes-Oxley took a hit last week when Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) member Charles Niemeier came out with the warning that policy makers risk damaging the reputation and competitiveness of U.S. markets if they roll back Sarbanes-Oxley and other s...
SOX slaps lawyers
in Sox First, on February 19, 2007
Last week Denver lawyer Frank Schuchat made the claim that Sarbanes-Oxley is manna for lawyers . He might have a point in that it's created plenty of work for them. But recent developments show that you have to be careful what you wish for. Before Sarbanes-Oxley, companies didn't have...
Bernanke backs Sarbanes-Oxley
in Sox First, on February 16, 2007
Further confirmation that Sarbanes-Oxley is here to stay with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke telling the US Senate Banking Committee that Sarbanes-Oxley is "worthwhile to keep", according to news reports . "If you take Sarbanes-Oxley as an example, to the extent th...
SOX, secrecy and the law of unintended consequences
in Sox First, on February 16, 2007
The "law of unintended consequences", discussed here , happens when one action results in an outcome that's completely unintended. No-one thought of it at the time. One of the best known examples is the argument that World War Two wouldn't have occurred if it wasn't for t...
Bush on SOX: more sound than fury?
in Sox First, on February 5, 2007
Nearly five years after he signed it into law (see photo) and even linking it to the September 11 attacks president bush last week came out with a so-called U-turn on Sarbanes-Oxley with the claim that the regulations were damaging America's financial markets. "This law helped...
CFO turnover on the up
in Sox First, on January 30, 2007
High turnover of chief financial officer turnover is now a fact of corporate life. But a growing number are now jumping ship, according to Reuters . According to the news report, 2300 CFOs of public companies in the United States and Canada headed for the exit door last year, compared with abo...
Booms, busts, fraud and Sarbanes-Oxley
in Sox First, on January 30, 2007
Interesting paper from Paul Povel, Rajdeep Singh and Andrew Winton from the University of minnesota on the cyclical nature of fraud and the implications for public policy and legislation. The paper, Booms, busts and frauds , reveals that fraud is most likely to occur in relatively good ...
Sarbanes-Oxley: is that really a wolf at the door?
in Sox First, on January 29, 2007
James Surowiecki has been a long-time defender of corporate regulation. Not surprisingly, he now condemns the doomsayers who say Sarbanes-0xley is destroying the American markets. They are out of touch with reality and guilty of over-simplification, he says in the New Yorker . The SOX-bashers...
The SOX debate and global capital
in Sox First, on January 26, 2007
Despite a McKinsey report warning that New York faces a dire future as a financial centre if Sarbanes-Oxley isn't fixed, and despite the misgivings about SOX from Hank Paulson's crew in the interim report from the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation , SarbOx remains popular with i...
Going dark: public companies and public interest
in Sox First, on January 22, 2007
I have talked about the costs of Sarbanes-Oxley forcing companies to delist themselves and go dark . The disturbing part about that trend is that it undermines one of the great strengths of the markets in the US, Canada, Europe and Great Britain and Australia with the rise of the citizen invest...
Is SOX unconstitutional?
in Sox First, on December 18, 2006
Totally unconstitutional says prosecutor Kenneth Starr in The Wall Street Journal. Starr, who lead the charge on Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky , is now heading up the constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board by the Free Enterprise Fund , a conservative...
