SOX Center

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 activities in a range of different areas at an oversight hearing.

“There are enough issues that the SEC is working on that we wanted to have a full, wide-ranging discussion,” said Steve Adamske, a committee spokesman.

Among those issues are the agency’s implementation of accounting rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, its oversight of hedge funds, its enforcement policies, private securities litigation and access to proxy ballots.

MarketWatch:SEC commissioners to go before House panel

Key lawmakers and regulators debated the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law at a summit on American competitiveness Wednesday, with no quick fix emerging about the often criticized act.

The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee said he’s open to changing parts of the law, which requires costly accounting checks and has been roundly criticized by businesses for being expensive and time consuming.

If there are needed changes, Rep. Barney Frank said in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “we can go forward with that” in Congress.

But Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox defended the law, saying Congress shouldn’t tinker with it.

Cox said that the SEC is working to eliminate the unnecessary costs of the law and that U.S. markets remain world leaders despite challenges from abroad.

MarketWatch: Sarbanes-Oxley fix debated at competition summit

Congressman Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, along with Reps. Tom Feeney (news, bio, voting record) (R-Fla.) and Pete Sessions (news, bio, voting record) (R-Texas) will be holding press conference on Tuesday, March 13 in room SC-6 of the Capitol at 10:00 AM in order to re-introduce a bill to make improvements to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The bill is designed to reduce some of the financial burdens that have been put on small to mid cap businesses as a part of attesting to the soundness of their internal control functions.

The bill is the COMPETE Act of 2007, which stands for Competitive and Open Markets that Protect and Enhance the Treatment of Entrepreneurs Act first introduced by both Meeks and Feeney in 2006.

Yahoo!: U.S. Reps. Meeks, Feeney and Sen. DeMint Aim to Make Improvements to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) yesterday held out an olive branch to business interests, announcing that he would be open to cooperating on trade, immigration and outsourcing if industry gave ground on union drives, health-care reforms and minimum-wage proposals.

At a briefing to introduce his legislative agenda, Frank, the incoming chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, addressed several hot-button issues, including a mounting push by business interests to slash what they consider burdensome regulations.

The lawmaker said he had met with leaders of the Securities and Exchange Commission and an accounting industry oversight board to urge them to give businesses some relief from a costly audit rule prescribed by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. Over the next two weeks, the agencies are set to present proposed changes to the rule, which requires that auditors review corporate financial controls to prevent fraud and mistakes.

washingtonpost.com: Frank Offers Compromise to Business

The co-author of the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law said he expects some changes in the way the law is enforced as early as next year.

Speaking at the Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst Conference, Ohio Republican Rep. Michael Oxley, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he sees bipartisan support for changes in the regulation at the Securities and Exchange Commission, rather than new legislation from Congress.

Here you will find the story:

Morningstar: Oxley Sees Changes In Sarbanes-Oxley In Near Future