SOX Center

For the last few years, a number of American venture capitalists have been visiting China to study how to break into the markets of that emerging giant. But one has spent time there studying exits — not from China, but from his start-ups back in the United States.
Already, there are a small but growing number […]

Hong Kong surged past New York this year and became the world’s second most popular place _ after London _ for companies to float new stock listings.
The city’s amazing success was due to several factors, analysts say. Being next door to mainland China’s booming economy was a huge help. Tough new U.S. accounting rules have […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission gave the smallest public companies five more months to comply with financial-control rules under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Under the latest extension, the smallest companies will have to report on their controls in annual reports for fiscal years ending on or after Dec. 15, 2007.The previous deadline was for fiscal years […]

An U.S. District Court judge heard arguments Thursday challenging a sweeping 2002 federal law to clean up corporate accounting, in a case questioning whether the accounting oversight board created by the law is constitutional.
Free-market groups and a small Nevada accounting firm argue that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which is charged with inspecting and […]

On the SEC site, see spotlight on Internal Control Reporting Provisions, which includes the SEC’s proposed guidance, “Management Reporting on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting”.
This is the first guidance from the SEC directed specifically toward management, and intended to be applied in context with the newly released draft auditing standard (AS5) published by the PCAOB […]

Europe’s long battle with the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate- governance act appears to be ending after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved this week to ease the regulatory burden on businesses, the European Commission and leading European businessmen said Friday.
“This is good news coming out of America,” said E.U. spokesman Oliver Drewes. It shows our “intense […]

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board today voted unanimously to propose for public comment a new standard on auditing internal control over financial reporting and other related proposals. The proposed standard would replace the Board’s existing internal control standard, Auditing Standard No. 2.
The proposed new standard on internal control is a principles-based standard designed […]

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has announced an open meeting for 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, December 19, to consider proposing for public comment a new auditing standard to supersede the Board’s existing auditing standard on internal control over financial reporting, and other related proposals.
The meeting will be held in the Board’s open meeting room at […]

Amid a final round of negotiations on making it easier to comply with the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, federal regulators appear to be of different minds on some of the details.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires public-company management to review internal financial-reporting controls each year, and hire outside auditors to evaluate the controls. Critics say the requirement has […]

The SEC’s five commissioners are planning to propose changes to the audit rule of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Widely criticized by business for being costly and time-consuming, the law’s Section 404 requires auditors to review corporations’ financial controls in order to catch potential fraud.
Opposition to the rules, which were passed by Congress in the wake of […]