Internal Controls

The staffs of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board are churning new guidance on how companies can better navigate the internal control provisions of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. That’s the promise of those agencies’ respective chairmen, made at a packed SEC roundtable event last week. The PCAOB has […]

An analysis of the stock market impact of material weakness disclosures, provided by Compliance Week subscriber Dan Spiegelman, SVP and CFO of Palo Alto based CV Therapeutics.

According to a review of internal control disclosures made during the month March 2005, 116 companies disclosed material weaknesses in their internal control over financial reporting. As usual, we’re making the complete list—including excerpts and the original filings—available to subscribers in the box at right. The number of weakness disclosures was up significantly from the […]

Foamex International disclosed last week that it is the subject of an informal inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to the company’s internal controls—marking what appears to the first time that a Commission investigation specifically targeting internal controls under The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been made public. In announcing its fourth quarter […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission will take quick action on what it learns at this week’s SEC Roundtable on Implementation of Internal Control Reporting Provisions. That’s the pledge of Donald Nicolaisen, chief accountant of the SEC, in a written statement preceding the event. “Because many registrants are or soon will be evaluating their internal control […]

This profile is the latest in a series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. An index of previous conversations is available here. You’re the first compliance director Altera has ever hired. Why this position, and why now? They were moving down this […]

As expected, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board last week agreed to propose an audit standard for reporting on the “elimination” of a material weakness in a company’s internal control over financial reporting. The PCAOB’s Standing Advisory Group had originally discussed the possibility of such a standard back in November, and the Board had recently […]

This profile is the latest in a series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. An index of previous conversations is available here. Start by outlining your areas of responsibility. It’s pretty broad. Some companies see compliance in a narrow sense and some […]

In what some might consider a rash of corporate bragging, several companies in recent weeks have issued press releases touting successful compliance with Section 404 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Nothing in SOX compels such public fist-pumping; the statute merely requires notification to the Securities and Exchange Commission in formal filings. But after tackling […]

Standard setters never meant to cut contact between auditors and their clients with the recent wave of rules establishing greater independence for auditors, nor did they intend to create excessive accounting costs for smaller companies. That’s according to Daniel Goelzer, a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, who spoke at the Washington Economic […]