SOX Center

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 one-third (31 percent) say its restrictions did not go far enough. Only eight percent say the law went too far.

The study on investor attitudes toward CEOs and their corporate boards finds almost nine out of ten investors say that jail time should be mandatory for corporate officers and board members convicted of practices harmful to employees, shareholders and the public. Four out of five investors surveyed favor actions by prosecutors to aggressively recover company losses from convicted executives and/or board members’ personal assets.

Yahoo!Finance: Study: Investors Say Sarbanes-Oxley Got It Right; Wish Mandatory Jail Time for Wrongdoers

The Corporate Directors Club, with nearly 600 members nationwide, today announced the first program for Professional Director Certification. Directors of public companies are under increased pressure and scrutiny since Sarbanes-Oxley and there is a growing need for well educated, skilled and experienced professional directors. The Corporate Directors Club, whose membership is open to all directors and CEOs of public companies, free of charge, sponsors a full schedule of educational and social events across the country for its members.

Yahoo!Finance: Professional Director Certification Announced for Public Company Directors

Preparing for a smooth CEO succession. Nurturing future leaders in the pipeline. Both are hallmarks of most admired companies, says Fortune’s Sheridan Prasso.

CEOs can get dumped more quickly than you can say “backdated stock options” in this post-Sarbanes-Oxley world. That’s one reason companies that do an effective job of CEO succession planning - and of training and keeping their next generation of talent - tend to be among the most admired.

Boards of such companies are more likely to have well-defined plans to cover the emergency loss of a CEO and other top executives, according to a study by Hay Group, which surveyed executives at more than 150 companies around the world about board governance and how they manage human capital. The follow-up research, conducted in the fourth quarter of 2006, divided the companies into two groups: those that ranked among the top three in their industries, and the rest.

cnnMoney.com: Resilient to the CEO revolving door