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A rising chorus of business groups is calling for dramatic accounting reforms

Corporations are suffering from a severe case of restatement fatigue. Last year 10% of public companies, some 1,244, had to correct their financials, up from less than 1% a decade ago. “Did all of these [companies] get it wrong because they were incompetent, lazy, or engaging in fraud?” says Robert C. Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management, a public mutual fund firm. “I don’t think [so].”

Of course, management is blaming the onerous rules of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SarbOx), which beefed up disclosure. But now companies also are blasting regulators. They contend officials at the Securities & Exchange Commission and others are capriciously reinterpreting rules or using ambiguous or inappropriate tests for problems–all of which has forced a flood of unnecessary and costly restatements. As a result, the movement to lighten the SarbOx burden has evolved into a broader push for dramatic accounting reforms.

BusinessWeekOnline: The Growing Revolt Against The SEC

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Commission, or FSC, said Tuesday it has signed a pact with a U.S. accounting body for joint inspection and investigation of Korean accounting firms that audit local companies listed on the U.S. bourses.

The agreement with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB, was spurred by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the U.S., which requires all accounting firms auditing corporations publicly traded in U.S. markets to register with the board and to undergo its inspections regularly, according to a statement by the FSC.

Morningstar.com: S Korea FSC, US Accounting Body Agree On Joint Watch On Accounting Cos