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Adecco, the world’s biggest temporary employment group, on Wednesday became the latest European company to seek a delisting from the New York Stock Exchange because of limited trading volumes and high costs.

However, the decision is particularly piquant for Adecco, which became the first big European group to fall foul of the intricacies of the US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in 2004.

Adecco was forced to repeatedly postpone reporting its earnings after the discovery of irregularities in parts of its North American business.

The investigation resulted in the discovery of only minor procedural irregularities, but led to costs of almost €100m for legal, accounting and public relations services – and ultimately led to the departure of John Bowmer as chairman.

msnbc: Adecco to seek NYSE delisting

Attempts to overturn portions of Sarbanes-Oxley may pick up steam this week after an April 4 report showed the value of European stock markets has overtaken U.S. markets for the first time since World War I.

The seismic shift in the value of equity markets is a further blow to the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. markets, which have seen some of the larger initial public offerings opt for overseas markets instead of their traditional NYSE home.

Critics of SarbOx blame the recent regulation for pushing the IPOs abroad. They claim the legislation makes compliance in the U.S. too costly.

New chief accountant named for SEC’s division of investment management

Richard F. Sennett has been named chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s division of investment management.

He will have primary responsibility for oversight of the financial reporting and accounting practices of registered investment companies.

According to the SEC, he was instrumental in the development and implementation of the division’s Sarbanes-Oxley annual report review process.

AccountancyAge: Sarbox man gets chief accountant role at SEC

Some Accuse SEC of Pushing Accounting Board, Tilting to Business in Rules Process

Complaints are rising that the Securities and Exchange Commission is muscling an accounting oversight board in a tilt toward business interests as the two agencies fashion rules for public companies and auditors under a landmark anti-fraud law.

In recent months the SEC and the independent board that supervises the accounting industry have taken differing approaches toward the key part of the Sarbanes-Oxley law that arose from the 2002 corporate scandals: the requirement for companies to assess the strength of their internal financial controls and to fix any problems.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox urged, in a letter to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board last fall, that it revise its rules for outside accountants under the requirement to adapt them to the size of the company whose books are being audited.

Yahoo!:SEC Accused of Muscling Accounting Board

Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley, renowned authors of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance reform legislation, have become America’s favorite whipping boys for the emigration of foreign equity listings from New York to London. But it was the earlier efforts of another congressman, one who now has far more influence over the competitiveness of the US capital markets, which in fact sparked the exodus by deliberately mixing domestic market regulation with foreign policy.

In 1999, two commissions reported to Congress on Chinese military links to commercial and financial activities in the US. The reports grabbed headlines with their focus on the purported role of the US capital markets in financing Chinese weapons development and proliferation. The first of these commissions was chaired by congressman Christopher Cox, now chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Financial Times: Cox, not Sarbox, is to blame for equity exodus

A bipartisan bill in Congress that would ease Sarbanes-Oxley reporting demands on small businesses is a welcome move, according to William H. Venema, a corporate attorney at Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall, P.C.

The odds of the bill passing are good, since this is the bill’s third incarnation in Congress in three years.

“The cost of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley has caused many companies to abandon plans to go public or to list on overseas exchanges, both of which are dangerous trends,” said Venema. “When Congress feels the political heat of an issue, it often responds in a way that can best be described as an overreaction. When the heat cools down, it is often a good idea to take a second look at the laws that were passed. The new bill is a realization that SOX went too far and stifled small business under reporting requirements.”

Morningstar: Bipartisan COMPETE Act is an Overdue Reform of Sarbanes-Oxley, Says Epstein Becker Green Wickliff & Hall Attorney

Reeling from the Sarbanes-Oxley blues, backdating scandals, and intense pressure to perform, CFOs (and their bosses) are vacating their offices at an alarming clip.

For years, companies have complained about the short-term focus of Wall Street. Now Wall Street has good reason to complain right back about them. Reeling from the Sarbanes-Oxley blues, backdating scandals, and intense pressure to perform, CFOs (and their bosses) are vacating their offices at an alarming clip. Various surveys estimate the average tenure of a CFO at anywhere from four and a half years to a mere 17 months.

This can’t be good. As Bob Brust, former CFO of Eastman Kodak, comments (see “The Tenure Track”), “If you stay with a company for only three years, you never get to see whether the decisions you made were good or bad; it usually takes five to seven years to really see the results.”

CFO.com: The Three-year Itch?

Europe, if you are a stock investor, is now bigger than the US. The landmark, passed last week, has been achieved despite the retirement of a net EU107.1bn (£72.4bn) in European equity over the past two years, according to Citigroup (NYSE:C - news). Its import goes far beyond the noise over the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance rules.

That said, there are caveats. First, the definition of “Europe” is one that economists, market analysts, or even geographers would not normally recognise. It covers all of “emerging Europe” - including Turkey and Russia. This is “Europe plus Siberia and Anatolia”. By crossing the Urals, “Europe” includes Russia’s fuel reserves. By crossing the Bosphorus, it gains the Turkish economy, currently growing at more than 6 per cent. The population of this “Europe” is about 2.5 times that of the US. North America, including Canada and Mexico, might be a better comparison.

Yahoo!: European stocks top US

Double-listed the company’s assets to induce a bank to continue financing its operations.

Steven Garfinkel, former chief financial officer of defunct health-care finance company DVI, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $51 million in restitution, reported the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Last December, Garfinkel pleaded guilty to mail fraud and to violating the provision of Sarbanes-Oxley that requires CEOs and CFOs to certify financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DVI provided financing to health-care providers seeking to purchase or lease diagnostic medical equipment; in turn, DVI secured financing from Fleet Bank (since acquired by Bank of America). According to U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan, in a statement last November announcing the charges, Garfinkel defrauded Fleet by double-listing approximately $50 million in assets to induce the bank to lend money to DVI. The finance chief then falsely certified a quarterly report, Meehan also alleged.

CFO.com: CFO to Pay $51M for Fraud, Sarbox Breach

A vast transatlantic stock market emerged on Tuesday when the New York Stock Exchange won control of pan-European market operator Euronext, creating an entity worth 29 billion dollars linking trading platforms in six cities.

The two markets said in a statement that the NYSE had acquired 91.42 percent of Euronext capital and 92.22 percent of the voting rights according to a provisional tally of shareholder acceptances.

The new leviathan, creating the first inter-continental stock market capitalised at about 22 billion euros, will bring markets in New York, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Lisbon under one group and will also include the Liffe financial futures market in London.

A vital point is that companies quoted on each market will continue to operate under existing regulations. European companies will not be affected by severe accounting rules, as stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which are much criticised in the United States for increasing costs on quoted comapnies.

Yahoo: NYSE buys Euronext, forming first inter-continental stock market