SOX Center

Investors who got a midsummer haircut last week during the Dow’s 735-point drop from 14,000 probably aren’t singing Happy Birthday for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is 5 years old today. But maybe they should be.
If you think last week’s sell-off was bad, recall the summer of 2002. Enron had imploded, WorldCom admitted to fabricating billions […]

While Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance costs decreased overall in 2006, the out-of-pocket costs associated with compliance rose from 2005 to 2006, according to a study planned for release on Thursday.
Foley & Lardner’s fifth annual study measuring the financial impact of Sarbanes-Oxley on public companies finds that the cost of audit fees, board compensation, and legal fees […]

As U.S. regulators and industry recognize Sarbanes-Oxley’s fifth year this July 30, most investors (57 percent) in a new survey by Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management believe the requirements imposed by the law, holding CEOs and senior management personally accountable for the accuracy of their companies’ financial disclosures, are about right, while […]

Japanese insurer Millea Holdings Inc. (8766.T) said on Thursday it will voluntarily have its shares delisted from the U.S. Nasdaq market and stop reporting its earnings under U.S. accounting rules to save costs.
Millea, a holding company with both life and non-life insurance operations, also announced plans to buy back up to 7 million of its […]

Critics of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley act say the bill’s post-Enron/WorldCom accounting reforms have made U.S. capital markets less competitive with those overseas. It’s no surprise that one of its authors, former U.S. Rep. Michael Oxley, says that’s hardly the case. Oxley says recent refinements to the section of the act requiring companies to monitor internal […]

(Bloomberg) — The U.S. House of Representatives moved toward giving small companies an additional year to adhere to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s accounting rules, which are being revised by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
House lawmakers voted 267 to 154 to delay a deadline for companies with less than $75 million in publicly available shares to start […]