SOX Center

With the SEC holding to its Dec. 15 deadline for compliance, companies will be scrambling.

Time’s up!

That’s the message for small public companies from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which met recently to give final approval to new guidelines and amendments to the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law.

The five-member commission didn’t include a hoped-for extension of the Dec. 15 deadline for small public companies to comply with provisions that critics say are too costly and time-consuming. That means small public companies will have to follow the complex Sarbanes-Oxley rules, which require an annual evaluation of the effectiveness of internal controls, for fiscal years that end after that date.

“We feel at this point it’s full throttle ahead to get us fully compliant by the end of the year,” said Wayne Lipschitz, chief financial officer and vice president of finance for Brentwood-based Grill Concepts Inc., which owns and manages the Daily Grill and Grill on the Alley restaurants.

Small public companies are defined as those whose market value — the price of their stock multiplied by the number of their shares outstanding — is less than $75 million. Grill Concepts has a market value of about $45 million.

latimes.com: Sarbanes-Oxley: No more delays