Matt Kelly

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 the Senate Banking Committee, […]

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 will inevitably have more […]

The book Money for Nothing can be summed up in one sentence: The boards running corporations in America today are ineffective. But while that sentence may be accurate, it is not news to corporate compliance and governance officers, so those of you looking for a more substantive analysis or solutions to the governance problems you […]

Every spring I write an editorial announcing the lineup of our annual Compliance Week lineup. As you might imagine, last year’s conference, in the shadow of recession and financial crisis, had a touch of gallows humor to the whole affair. I am happy, and more than a little surprised, to report that our 2010 conference […]

Yet again, the chorus of Sarbanes-Oxley critics out there have been shouted down by one bald fact: SOX compliance prevents financial restatements. According to a new study due out this week from Audit Analytics, restatements fell for the third year in a row in 2009, from 923 in 2008 to 674 last year. The restatements […]

Every spring I write an editorial announcing the lineup of our annual Compliance Week lineup. As you might imagine, last year’s conference, in the shadow of recession and financial crisis, had a touch of gallows humor to the whole affair. I am happy, and more than a little surprised, to report that our 2010 conference […]

Sometimes corporate leaders step up and do the simple, ethical thing, and their tone at the top is a harmonized chorus delightful to hear. Sometimes they do the wrong thing, and their tone is more like a tribal screech of self-interest. And then there is the messy, jangling, cacophonous governance meltdown otherwise known as Bank […]

Earlier this week I had the privilege of co-hosting an executive roundtable in Atlanta with a dozen ethics and compliance officers, this time with the audit firm Crowe Horwath where the topic was fraud. The discussion was excellent and Compliance Week will have full coverage of it in a newsletter in another week or two, […]

Yesterday I wrote about executive compensation as a huge part of corporate governance that can sound a terrible tone at the top if handled poorly. Today I want to write about another, often-overlooked part of governance: CEO succession. We should see some fresh action on CEO succession this proxy season. The Securities and Exchange Commission […]