Congress

PCAOB Gets Mandate: Tone Down Rotation Talk

March 29, 2012

Congress has given the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board a clear warning to tone down talk of mandating audit firm rotation, especially since the audit regulator hasn't produced hard evidence that the benefits will outweigh the costs. During a House committee hearing last week, members of Congress said the PCAOB may be overstepping its authority on the issue.
 

Congress Moves to Block PCAOB on Auditor Rotation

March 23, 2012

Congress has decided to join the fray over mandatory audit rotation, with a proposal to amend the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to block the PCAOB from writing a new rule limiting auditor tenure. The PCAOB is currently exploring ways to increase auditor independence, including term limits for auditors.
 

Delays Raise Uncertainties in Food Safety Compliance

February 22, 2012

Agribusinesses and food companies are preparing for the largest safety reform in 75 years to arrive later this summer—except for the small detail that few final regulations have been adopted yet. "There are a lot of questions to which we do not know the answers," says Clifford Pappas, senior adviser of food safety education at food safety auditor AIB International. Feast on the details inside.
 

Debating Dodd-Frank: What's in a Name?

March 16, 2011

Members of the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing last week to consider five possible revisions to the Dodd-Frank Act, ranging from looser rules for derivatives trading to repealing a rule that companies must calculate and disclose median employee pay. More inside.
 

Flashback: The SEC During the Last Government Shutdown

March 08, 2011

If the federal government is forced to shut down due to the the budget impasse in Congress, the SEC could stay open using funds from "non-year money" appropriations—as it did during the last shutdown. Although it's unlikely such funds would last for very long.
 

Congressional Investigations Set to Multiply

February 01, 2011

Congress, hiring investigative units and firing off angry invective against regulatory agencies and big industry alike, is sending out early signals that it plans a busy season of investigations and inquiries. Plan accordingly.
 

Pondering the Dodd-Frank Act

July 20, 2010

Hooray, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform bill into law last week! Now we can all start speculating about how ineffective, irrelevant and incomplete it is! Right? Um … right?Here’s the unvarnished truth, folks: Nobody talking about the Dodd-Frank Act today has any idea whether it will really achieve its...
 

Why You Should Care About Derivatives Reform

June 21, 2010

Like most human beings, I somewhat wish derivatives had never been invented—not because they aren't useful (they are), but because discussion of how to regulate the derivatives trade makes my head hurt. I'm sure I am not alone on this.Nevertheless, how derivatives are created, traded, and disclosed to the public...
 

Pre-Gaming the Compliance Week 2010 Conference

May 23, 2010

Well, it’s that time of year again: The Compliance Week annual conference.This is our fifth year holding an annual conference, and somewhat to my amazement, we genuinely do have the best lineup in our brief history. We will have more attendees, listening to more speakers, in more sessions, than ever...
 

Moves and Counter-Moves on the Dodd Bill

March 18, 2010

Sen. James DeMint, R-S.C., has promised to introduce an amendment to the Senate’s proposed regulatory reform bill that would exempt non-accelerated filers from compliance with Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.A Section 404(b) exemption for non-accelerated filers was notably absent from the reform bill unveiled by Christopher Dodd, chairman of...
 

Dissecting the Dodd Bill

March 15, 2010

The long-awaited regulatory reform bill from Sen. Christopher Dodd finally landed with a ponderous thump on desks across Washington, Wall Street and America this afternoon. It clocks in at 1,336 pages, which gives it more physical heft than the reform bill passed by the House (1,289 pages) last December.The bill...
 

The Compliance Week in Preview

February 21, 2010

We’ve got quite a week of compliance and governance news coming up this week, folks. I can’t recall the last time we’ve seen so many different stars in our particular universe align, so perhaps it’s worth drafting a scorecard for the week:Shareholder activism and disclosure. Remember that investor advisory committee...
 

Sen. Scott Brown, Part II: Enabling SOX 404(b)

January 21, 2010

The other day I pondered whether the improbable ascendancy of Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., might delay or otherwise thwart Democrats' plans to overhaul financial regulation. Let's not forget one other niche of corporate compliance where Brown's arrival as the 41st Republican senator might have serious consequences.He might allow the dreaded...
 

Regulatory Reform in Senator Scott Brown’s World

January 20, 2010

Well, that was quite a political curveball Massachusetts threw yesterday. Scott Brown’s startling victory in the special U.S. Senate race should, in truth, startle very few people. Compliance Week is based in Massachusetts and I personally have lived here almost my entire life, so first let me dispel a few...
 

Why You Should Listen to Barney Frank

January 06, 2010

Well, Compliance Week seems to have touched a nerve with news of the latest speaker for our annual conference this spring: Congressman Barney Frank.As some of you might have seen already, earlier this week we sent out a mass email announcing that Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee,...
 

Everything Old Is New Again

December 29, 2009

Well, that was quite a decade.You may need to dust off some old brain cells to recall (I did), but the 2000s began with recession, financial meltdown and radical legislative overhauls from Congress to fix corporate governance. Next came years of struggle to master the new contours of corporate compliance,...
 

PCAOB Lawsuit Finally Hits Supreme Court

December 04, 2009

The following is a guest post from Compliance Week assistant editor Jaclyn Jaeger.The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dec. 7 in the long legal challenge against the legitimacy of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—and by extension, the legitimacy of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act itself. Conservative activists teaming up...
 

The Fateful February 4 Madoff Hearing

July 14, 2009

Today's House Financial Services Committee hearing ("SEC Oversight: Current State and Agenda") featured prepared testimony by SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, as well as a lengthy question and answer session.  Among the most interesting parts was a statement by Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, who lambasted the SEC back in...
 

Sen. Grassley and I Still Trying to Get SEC IG's Report

June 18, 2009

In a letter addressed to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro on Monday, Senator Chuck Grassley says he is tired of waiting for an unredacted copy of the recent Inspector General report (discussed here) about the activities of SEC attorneys who may have engaged in insider trading and violations of the SEC's...
 

Questions About Obama's Regulatory Reforms

June 17, 2009

A quick read of the Obama Administration’s proposed reforms of regulatory oversight leaves you with two impressions. First, for the large majority of compliance officers and financial reporting executives out there not involved in the financial sector, little will change. You still have much bigger concerns about increasingly aggressive folks...
 

Rep. Kanjorski to SEC IG Kotz: Work Faster!!!

June 16, 2009

Let's try to quickly catch up on the back and forth that has gone on since yesterday between House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee Chairman Paul Kanjorski and SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz.  Yesterday, Kanjorski announced that he sent a letter to Kotz calling for an update by the...
 

Schumer Continues to Press for SEC Move from DC to NY

May 12, 2009

Back in January, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York commented that he believed it made sense to physically move the staff of the SEC’s Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) from Washington, DC to New York.  He stated then that OCIE should be moved to New York because “it...
 

GAO Report Raises Four Key Questions for Khuzami

May 07, 2009

Today at 2:30 pm ET, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee's Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment will hold an important hearing on "Strengthening the SEC's Vital Enforcement Responsibilities."   The hearing comes just one day after the release of an extraordinary Report to Congressional Requesters by the Government Accountability Office...
 

Senators Propose Additional $20mn for SEC Enforcement

April 22, 2009

Just days after it was reported that the SEC's Enforcement Division is “well down” in head count from prior years and stuck in a holding-pattern until Congress approves its new budget, two senior U.S. Senators proposed that the Enforcement Division receive $20 million in additional funds to hire more enforcement...
 

The Sorry State of Congress and Fair Value

March 17, 2009

Let me be sure I remember things correctly: Last fall, Washington was worried about the Europeans watering down accounting rules in the face of political pressure, right?I ask because last week we witnessed the crisis over fair-value accounting rules devolve into some sad mixture of The Godfather and an accounting...
 

Look, Up in the Sky! Regulation!

February 24, 2009

We don’t write about corporate sustainability all that much around here because, well, nobody in Washington had been doing all that much about sustainability either. Now that may change. A recent legal bulletin from McGuire Woods notes that Lisa Jackson, the Obama Administration’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency,...
 

Executive Pay Reforms: Is the Truth Out There?

February 16, 2009

Back in the 1990s, I was a big fan of The X Files. Little did I know that the central tenets of that program—distrust, cynicism, and a deep suspicion that people in Washington are controlled by aliens—would be so useful when analyzing the economic stimulus bill. Compliance officers and corporate secretaries...
 

House Sets Hearing to Assess Madoff Ponzi, Reform

December 31, 2008

The House Committee on Financial Services has scheduled a Full Committee Meeting for Monday, January 5, 2009, at 2:00 p.m., to hear testimony on "Assessing the Madoff Ponzi and the Need for Regulatory Reform."  The names of the witnesses are not yet listed on the Committee's website, but TPMMuckraker reports...
 

Early Returns on Section 404

November 05, 2008

One bit of political flotsam flushed away in last night's blue deluge: U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney of Florida. Feeney, a three-term Republican from central Florida, has been an outspoken critic of Sarbanes-Oxley and specifically of applying its notorious Section 404 provisions to small companies. Well, he lost last night. Democrat Suzanne...
 

The SEC Irrelevance Factor and You

October 24, 2008

You've got to feel a bit of sympathy for SEC Chairman Christopher Cox these days. The SEC faces a Gordian knot on the regulatory front, certainly. But the SEC also faces a deeper, more serious political crisis: It is becoming irrelevant in the conversation now occurring across Washington to decide...
 

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