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Former Senator Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., who, as the head of the Senate Banking Committee, co-authored the sweeping Sarbanes-Oxley reform act said he supports developing additional guidance for smaller filers but, not surprisingly, dismisses exempting those companies from compliance with the legislation’s rigid Section 404.
“Stop and think about that for a moment,” said Sarbanes in a […]

The U.S. and Europe should be able to achieve a single accounting standard by 2009, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Committee, Christopher Cox, said Sunday.
Cox was appearing on a panel at the German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum. In other comments, he said the SEC was proving able to modify the U.S.’s Sarbanes-Oxley legislation […]

Increased regulatory pressures and the fear of sanctions for failure to comply are making FTSE-350 FDs reluctant to relinquish control over sensitive finance and accounting functions
The burden of handling regulatory and compliance issues has become a major obstacle to outsourcing finance and accounting business functions, according to research among UK finance directors.
The survey of 50 […]

Telekom Austria, Vernalis Plan to Delist From U.S. Exchanges
European companies are already signaling their intent to take advantage of a pending change in rules that will let them easily cancel U.S. stock listings and escape the regulatory constraints of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Telekom Austria AG and Vernalis PLC, a […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday threw its weight behind finalising fresh guidelines aimed at clarifying how companies and auditors should comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley law.
The move signals that work by the US authorities to ease the burden of compliance with the 2002 law is moving into its final stage three months after proposed […]

Republicans attempted to make compliance optional for companies with a market value of less than $700 million.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday defeated a Republican attempt to weaken 2002’s post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley laws by making it optional for many corporations to comply with a controversial section on internal controls. By a vote of 62-35, the Senate set […]

A new report into reporting and forecasting processes in European companies offers suggestions for improvement
What are the hot topics that finance directors are facing this year? In short, it’s people, performance and processes, in that order, according to recent research by BPM International, a network of business performance management consultancies, the UK arm of which […]

Fifty percent of the CFOs who left companies did so for reasons other than finding another job. Those included inability to fit culturally into the organization, the increasingly stressful demands of the position and lack of current knowledge related to Sarbanes-Oxley, according to a survey by Right Management.
CFOs lasted in their positions for more than […]

Few Give Stock Options a Second Look ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oversight Systems Inc. today released the results of the 2007 Oversight Systems Financial ExecutiveReport on Sarbanes-Oxley. The survey of 168 financial executives identifies growing benefits of continuous monitoring, improved management of year-three compliance costs and a positive jump in shareholder value.
The 4th annual survey found financial […]

New legislation recently introduced in the US Senate aims to ensure that Sarbanes-Oxley Act regulations due to take effect in June do not disproportionately impact the nation’s small businesses.
The Small Business Regulatory Review Act of 2007 would require the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to take into account […]