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The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced Wednesday that deputy chief auditor Laura Phillips will step down later this year. It said Phillips had not yet accepted another position.

Phillips led the oversight body’s controversial effort to implement internal- control reporting requirements mandated by Congress in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Under pressure from businesses and lawmakers, the oversight board is scrapping its original audit standard and proposed a new one it hopes to finalize by midyear. The new audit standard, which must be approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is intended to address complaints about the cost of complying with requirement for public companies to review their internal financial-reporting controls annually and have findings undergo separate scrutiny by their outside auditor. Larger U.S. companies are already subject to the requirement and smaller firms facing it for the first time this year worry that compliance costs could be crushing.

Dow Jones Newswires: Accounting Oversight Board Senior Staffer Stepping Down