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In a move that surprises nearly nobody, the Securities and Exchange Commission has given its formal blessing to another year’s extension for small companies to comply with the auditor attestation requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The June 20 announcement means non-accelerated filers will be required to provide the attestation reports required under SOX Section 404(b) […]

Voices from all corners of the financial reporting world had a clear message for the Securities and Exchange Commission at a recent forum on global accounting standards: Set a date already. Despite varying views on exactly how the United States should make the switch to International Financial Reporting Standards and whether the financial reporting community […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission seems to be planning a busy summer. In addition to efforts to adopt XBRL and push forward with possible adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, the SEC plans to tackle a laundry list of other rulemaking initiatives in the next two months, its chairman recently said. Chairman Christopher Cox outlined […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission seems ready to push forward with its idea of letting U.S. corporations file financial statements according to International Financial Reporting Standards—even as the clock winds down on current SEC leadership—and many fundamental questions about convergence remain. John White, director of the SEC Division of Corporation Finance, recently gave a speech […]

As corporate scandals go global ever more frequently, so do regulatory enforcement efforts. That’s according to Linda Chatman Thomsen, head of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division. Speaking last week at Compliance Week 2008, Thomsen told some 500 corporate legal and compliance officers that information sharing among regulators is becoming dramatically easier […]

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had asked states for years to close what he considers a gaping hole in America’s defenses: identifying the “beneficial owners” of newly formed companies. Levin regularly fires off statistics and telling details about the problem: 2 million corporations or limited liability companies formed in […]

Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management and a long-time player on the financial and regulator scenes, has always been a critic of complexity in financial reporting. Now, as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission committee trying to reduce that complexity, his job is nearly done. In a keynote speech delivered at the Compliance […]

The latest statistics have arrived on Corporate America’s use of “notice and access,” or e-proxy rules, this season. Two trends are clear: savings are up, and retail voting is down. That’s according to proxy processing firm Broadridge, which has compiled data on 566 companies that have used the new notice-and-access rules that went into effect […]

Anyone expecting a flurry of Securities and Exchange Commission rulemaking this week to beat a June 1 deadline on new proposals could be disappointed—the mandate doesn’t apply to independent agencies like the SEC. The deadline, set forth in a May 9 memo by White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, called for any new regulations […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting has kept itself busy this spring. In February, it issued a progress report that summarized its potential recommendations to simplify financial reporting; in March and May, it held follow-up meetings to discuss those ideas more thoroughly. I’ve already written about CIFR’s recommendation regarding […]