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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

The U.S. Treasury Department will host a conference March 12-13 to discuss the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and possible reforms, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday.

Businesses complain that Sarbanes-Oxley, a package of accounting and governance changes enacted by Congress after a wave of corporate scandals in the late 1990s, has proved too costly and difficult to follow. Paulson, speaking to the Economic Club of Washington, said overall, the changes have had a positive effect on business.

“The vast majority of the change, in my judgment, has been good,” Paulson said.

A look at recent scandals involving big payouts to company executives via backdated stock options stemmed from activities predating Sarbanes-Oxley, Paulson said. Sarbanes-Oxley reporting requirements discouraged such behavior later on, he said.

Morningstar: Treasury To Host Sarbanes-Oxley Conference March 12-13