Internal Controls

In the latest of our conversations with compliance and governance executives, we catch up with Steve Sams, head of Project Big Green at IBM, Corp. Readers can also visit our archive of Q&A interviews. DETAILS Sams Steven L. Sams is vice president of Site and Facilities Services in IBM Global Technology Services. He is responsible […]

As the pressure grows on corporations to become more environmentally and socially responsible, so too do the responsibilities of today’s chief sustainability officer. No longer focused narrowly on compliance and risk associated with a company’s environmental impact, chief sustainability officers now reach out to all constituencies—management, shareholders, customers, and employees—and convey the benefits of environmental […]

Solar Integrated Technologies, a California company currently listed on London’s increasingly popular (and less regulated) AIM exchange, has always had its sights on being listed in the United States. The worry: regulatory considerations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. MacEwen Not anymore, says Randall MacEwen, chief executive officer of the $81 million solar roofing systems company. “Compliance […]

We all know the importance of effective communication, in both formal and informal settings, to get our messages across as intended. But how many times have we been misunderstood, or we didn’t understand an idea someone else was trying to convey? The consequences of bad communication range from simply extending a conversation to gain clarity, […]

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. […]

Lapses in safety controls might not seem like the sort of thing that could cause material financial problems for a company … right up until the airline industry strands hundreds of thousands of people across the country while it catches up on safety inspections. Then you start wondering how much all this is going to […]

The Institute of Internal Auditors has finally updated its internal control guidance to incorporate the new Auditing Standard No. 5 and the management guidelines published by the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. Marks The report entitled, “Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404: A Guide for Management by Internal Controls Practitioners,” builds on the original one published in […]

Finally, a downturn the corporate world can be happy about. Financial restatements dropped dramatically in 2007, reversing nearly a decade of ever-higher numbers that reached a record in 2006. What’s more, restatements fell both for companies that do need to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley and those that do not—another telling sign that Corporate […]

In the latest of our conversations with compliance and governance executives, we catch up with Dean Plank, director of internal audit at Silicon Graphics, Inc. Readers can also visit our archive of Q&A interviews. DETAILS Plank Dean Plank is the director of internal audit for Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) and holds a Masters International Management […]

With the books closing on many companies’ first internal control assessments under new, relaxed compliance guidelines, many chief financial officers are already pondering how to improve next year’s processes. For some companies and external auditors, it means another round in the tug-of-war over risk, zeroing in on areas that present the most meaningful risk of […]