SOX Center

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 […]

(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 […]

Roger Ehrenberg submits: I feared this day would come. And it’s here. No, not just the saber-rattling and moaning about how hedge fund and private equity-types are too rich, how hedge funds are increasing investor risks and debt buyers are accepting overly-liberal terms fueling the private equity juggernaut and the like.
But a newly-energized Democratic Congress […]

Commissioners of the government’s watchdog for Wall Street will face questions about their efforts to protect investors and oversee markets during a House hearing on Tuesday.
Members of the House Financial Services Committee will line up Tuesday afternoon to ask Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox and the four other SEC commissioners about the agency’s […]

SINGAPORE: Creative Technology, whose music players compete with the Apple iPod, said it planned to end trading of its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market to cut costs incurred by U.S. financial reporting requirements.
The Singapore-based company plans to file notice to remove the listing of its shares from the U.S. exchange on or around July […]

Study finds small firms hit especially hard
A new University of Georgia study finds that the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and related rule changes of the major stock exchanges have dramatically altered the makeup of corporate boards, making them larger and more independent. The legislation also had the unintended effect of increasing director pay by […]

Jack Ciesielski submits: CFO.com reports that Senators John Kerry (Massachusetts) and Olympia Snowe (Maine) have sent another letter to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox requesting further delay in the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s Section 404 for small companies.
It’s deja vu all over again: they sent a letter to him last February on the same subject.
Here’s […]

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act hasn’t helped in the long-running battle against corporate fraud, according to a recent survey of certified fraud examiners — a staggering 76 percent of whom reported that fraud is more prevalent today than five years ago.
The 2007 Report on Corporate Fraud, conducted for governance software vendor Oversight Systems Inc., noted that that […]

Almost three-quarters of the chief financial officers in the US believe that Sarbanes-Oxley should be “repealed or reformed” as the costs of the 2002 compliance law have outweighed the benefits, according to a survey.
The findings underscore the scale of frustration over the costs associated with implementing “Sarbox”, even as regulators said that costs were expected […]