As Corporate America awaits action on changes to improve the implementation of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, critics who say the high cost of compliance and the stringent regulatory environment are hurting U.S. competitiveness have stepped up public pressure on Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission to ease those burdens.
Both the Treasury Department and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hosted conferences last week focusing on the competitiveness of the U.S. capital markets. The Chamber and the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation—commonly known as the Paulson Committee, after Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson—issued reports saying the U.S. regulatory environment has become too stringent and questioning whether the benefits of Section 404 outweigh the costs.
