Internal Controls

Some executives are getting a pat on the back—in the form of a bonus—for helping their companies successfully navigate their first year of Sarbanes-Oxley’s notorious Section 404. A recent search of “material definitive agreements” filed on Form 8-K (available via Compliance Week’s searchable databases; see box at right), shows numerous companies awarding top executives for […]

As members of the U.S. business community grapple whether small public companies should be exempt from part or all of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Canadian regulators have made their own move—imposing their version of SOX on all corporations, but without the extensive auditing provisions of Section 404. The Canadian Securities Administrators, the group […]

At the request of subscribers, Compliance Week has launched 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 […]

Call it navel-gazing, Sarbanes-Oxley style. When SOX went into effect four years ago, the now-infamous “Section 404” required that management assess its internal control over financial reporting. And while the process may have initially focused on the documentation of those controls—considered critical to the outside auditors’ ability to sign-off on management’s assessment—corporate executives quickly began […]

Startling claims from Section 404 mavens in the compliance world: efforts to streamline or even cut compliance costs using the much-touted “top down, risk-based” approach might actually, you know, work. Janis “The shift to cost containment is really happening now as we move into Year Three” of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, says Christopher Janis, […]

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires chief executive and financial officers to put their liberty on the line when they attest to their companies’ financial statements. The safest way to do that: back up those attestations all the way down the line. Such “sub-certifications” from lower-level employees are not required by Sarbanes; only chief executive and financial […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board plan another roundtable forum to discuss second-year experiences with the internal controls requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Slated for May 10 at the Commission’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the roundtable will include issuers, auditors, investors and “other interested parties.” This discussion on compliance […]

An important meeting of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies last week did little but bring tensions around the Sarbanes-Oxley Act into sharper relief, even as the debate heats up still more with the release of the committee’s proposed recommendations. The panel was formed last year to examine the effect […]

Last month we looked at the benefits and related costs of Sarbanes-Oxley, with a skeptical eye on whether section 404 really makes sense. While I believe the column to be thoughtful and insightful, at least one reader feels that I just don’t get it. He writes: “I agreed totally with your statement when you concluded […]