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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 23, Creative said. The withdrawal will be effective 10 days after the notice is submitted, it said.

Last month Creative reported its fourth loss in five quarters for the three months to March 31 as sales missed the company’s expectations. U.S. financial reporting costs are set to climb as companies move to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2002 after accounting scandals eroded investor confidence.

Int. Herald Tribune: Creative Technology to leave the Nasdaq

You almost have to get lost to find Ocean Bio-Chem, a Fort Lauderdale company that makes the Star Brite brand of cleaning products for boats. It’s hidden away in the back of an industrial park alongside Florida’s Turnpike. Walk into CEO Peter Dornau’s cramped ground-floor office, and Jake, his chocolate Labrador, follows you in.

You get the picture. It isn’t exactly the IBM corporate campus or Coca-Cola’s headquarters.

Nevertheless, Ocean Bio-Chem’s shares trade on the Nasdaq, and like all companies listed on major exchanges, it must adhere to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the stiffened financial reporting requirements introduced in the aftermath of the Enron and fraud scandals.

Sun-Sentinel: Small businesses struggle with Sarbanes-Oxley

Challenging optimism about the efficiency of new auditing standards, the House Small Business Committee’s chairwoman called on federal regulators to give thousands of small public companies even more time to comply with a controversial section of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY, said on Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board must implement the internal-controls section of the law in a way that “does not hamper America’s competitiveness.” She said that “postponing the compliance deadlines for at least an additional year would allow us to make this determination.”

The 2002 law requires company management to evaluate internal controls over financial reporting, subject to review by outside auditors. The SEC has delayed applying the rules to more than 6,000 small companies at least four times, most recently citing a need to make the rules more efficient. Under current policy, small public companies will begin submitting management reports in 2008, and the auditor reports in 2009.

Nasdaq: House Lawmaker Calls On SEC To Delay Internal-Controls Rules

Securities and Exchange Commission internal control reporting requirements because smaller banks are already required to report to their bank regulators.

Testifying before the House Small Business Committee, Diane Casey-Landry, ACB president and CEO, said: “Community banks are part of a highly regulated industry subject to alternative requirements, heightening the need for relief from the unnecessary and duplicative burdens they face.” ACB was the only banking group to be invited to testify.

Casey-Landry explained that banks have 11 years of experience in filing internal control reports with their primary regulator and the FDIC, but now face the additional burden of costs and a second layer of internal control financial reporting required by section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. “No other publicly traded company is subjected to the same scrutiny as a publicly trade bank,” she declared.

Yahoo News: ACB Calls for Exemption of Community Banks From Requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley Act

CCH principal analyst and leading author on securities law, Jim Hamilton, JD, LLM, has released a white paper on the long-awaited Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issuances on internal controls over financial reporting under section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
CCH, a leading provider of securities law information, is part of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.

Reporting on the adequacy of internal controls was a significant element of the corporate reforms embodied in the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. Hamilton can explain and comment on the new regulations, including:

• Why regulators felt a new approach was necessary;
• The broad principles behind the guidance; and
• What the new issuances mean in practice for auditors.

“The issuances emphasize a ‘principles-based’ and risk-based approach,” said Hamilton. “This allows for greater discretion and judgment in assessing the effectiveness of the company’s internal control over financial reporting.”

Yahoo!Finance: New CCH White Paper Covers SEC, PCAOB Internal Controls Guidance

When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved last week to relax a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it signalled the end to what could be called the Great Audit War.

Ever since U.S. lawmakers passed the corporate reforms in 2002, legal and financial executives have been waging a behind-the-scenes war with external auditors over the staggering costs and management burden stemming from what surely has been the largest corporate list-making exercise in history.

The culprit is a four paragraph passage in the now infamous Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley which requires thousands of U.S. and about 200 Canadian companies listed on American stock exchanges to “review and assess” the controls they have in place to detect financial reporting errors or fraud. The kicker is a requirement that outside auditors test and deliver an annual opinion about the effectiveness of the corporate safeguards.

With no guidance from the SEC about how to arrive at the annual opinion, the accounting police went, well, berserk demanding exhaustive tests and reports so auditors wouldn’t be liable if financial shenanigans were exposed.

globeinvestor: Bid adieu to the Great Audit War

The US Treasury has welcomed a statement released by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board regarding their votes to address the implementation of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act:

“The SEC and the PCAOB, after carefully considering the effects of Section 404, moved this week to strike the right balance in enhancing financial reporting quality and eliminating unintended costs,” announced Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Robert K. Steel. “These key reforms should ensure that Section 404 is implemented in a risk-based and appropriately-scalable fashion, without sacrificing investor protection or diminishing the value of sound internal controls over financial reporting. Now that the regulators have acted, it is critical that public companies and the auditing profession respond to this call.”

Steel added: “Treasury congratulates the SEC, the PCAOB and their chairmen, Chris Cox and Mark Olson, for their cooperation in working to uphold investors’ confidence in and the competitiveness of America’s capital markets.”

Investorsoffshore: Treasury Welcomes Sarbanes Oxley Reforms

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved new guidance on Wednesday to help companies comply with what critics say is a burdensome and costly provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law.

The agency, by a 5-0 vote, encouraged companies to take a more risk-based approach to complying with Section 404 of the legislation.

“Congress never intended that the 404 process should become inflexible, burdensome and wasteful,” SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said at the agency’s open meeting.

Section 404 requires companies to assess their internal controls over financial reporting. It also calls for external auditors to report on management’s assessment and on the controls themselves.

Corporations and business lobbyists have complained that Section 404 was too expensive and the SEC has conceded that, in some cases, overly cautious companies caused the law’s costs to exceed its benefits.

Yahoo!Finance: SEC adopts new guidance for Sarbanes-Oxley

The financial reporting legislation may be changed in order to relax stringent regulations and reduce the cost of compliance

Regulators are preparing to review elements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to determine whether or not portions of the financial reporting legislation should be relaxed to ease the burden on companies doing business in the United States.

On May 24, the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) — the nonprofit oversight group created to help manage application of the Sarbanes Oxley Act — plans to meet in Washington to vote on a range of topics, including several issues that could shift the application of the legislation, originally passed in 2002 to help fight corporate financial fraud.

In the meetings, the group is expected to approve a final standard for auditing internal control over financial reporting as well as a related independence rule and several other measures.

If adopted, the rule will supersede PCAOB’s existing Auditing Standard No. 2, also known as “An Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting Performed in Conjunction with an Audit of Financial Statements.”

The PCAOB also plans to vote on two separate recommendations to amend its rules on the frequency and level of scrutiny in required inspections to test compliance with SOX.

Info World: Regulators to begin SOX reviews

U.S. securities regulators will vote on tweaks to the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley law on Wednesday, finalizing changes initially approved in April amid continuing complaints from businesses about the law’s unpopular accounting provision.

At issue is Section 404 of the law, which was passed in 2002 following scandals at Enron and other companies. The section requires companies to monitor their internal controls over financial reporting, as well as to test their controls. The aim is to ensure accurate financial statements and to catch fraud.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board have been under pressure from Congress and businesses to adjust Section 404, which is often criticized as expensive and time-consuming.

MarketWatch: SEC to finalize Sarbanes-Oxley tweaks