Veterans of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are now reporting record-low problems with internal control over financial reporting, although smaller companies newer to the SOX regime are still trailing behind in the march toward reliable, SOX-compliant financial reporting.
So says audit research firm Audit Analytics, which has tallied all but the tardiest of filings for the 2009 reporting year. It found that only 2.4 percent of more than 3,300 companies disclosed problems with internal controls last year—and even if every last straggler ultimately reports problems, the failure rate will still be only 2.8 percent, says Don Whalen, director of research ...