Internal Controls

Despite increased risks posed by supply chains, companies still have a long way to go when it comes to establishing ethics and compliance standards for their vendors, suppliers, and other business partners. So says a recent benchmarking survey by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. The SCCE surveyed more than 400 compliance and ethics […]

Institutional investors must do more to hold companies to account and question them about their corporate governance practices, according to the chief executive of the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, Hector Sants. Speaking at the U.K National Association of Pension Funds’ investment conference, Sants said shareholders must take responsibility—acting on their own and, more importantly, in […]

In the rearview mirror, corporate scandals that sparked increased attention over the need for better corporate governance, risk management, internal control, and compliance may appear smaller than they really are. Yet, despite the evident need, many companies are slashing GRC budgets. In the current environment, GRC executives simply must know how to do more with […]

Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem, “If,” written in 1895, talks about rewards to be reaped if we’re able to “keep our head[s] when all about [us] … are losing theirs.” The reality of corporate life, however, is that public companies can’t keep their heads, or their other key executives. Eventually, CEOs and senior executives die, suffer […]

Companies continue to improve in their compliance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, even though smaller companies just entering the Section 404 realm have lots of ground to cover. Large corporations now in their fourth year of compliance with Section 404—the nettlesome SOX requirement that companies annually assess their internal control over financial reporting […]

Long-awaited guidance on how to monitor internal controls has finally arrived and could mean less year-end work for companies attesting to the effectiveness of their internal control over financial reporting. Published by The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, or COSO, the guidance is intended to help make internal controls more efficient and […]

At the request of subscribers, Compliance Week offers a Remediation Center, in which readers can submit questions—anonymously—to securities and accounting experts. Compliance Week’s editors will review all questions and then submit them—confidentially, of course—to specialists who can address the issues. The questions and responses will then be reprinted in a future edition of Compliance Week. […]

Most companies could still wring more efficiency out of their Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts, according to a new study, even after four years of practice at SOX compliance and relaxed standards from the Securities and Exchange Commission issued last year. The report, based on interviews with more than 30 senior finance and internal control professionals, concludes […]

An exclusive Compliance Week survey shows that many corporations are bracing for a drop in revenues next year and a spike in fraud—not that they have the internal controls ready to fight it. That’s according to the results of an online survey of 249 compliance, legal, finance, and risk executives at public companies conducted by […]