Even though standards or deadlines are not yet mandated, many companies are spending inordinate amounts of time — or should be — beefing up their internal controls. Much of this activity is at the prodding of the independent auditors, whose attestation fees are often estimated at a level at least as high as the current audit fees.
[As an aside, many companies are being approached by their auditors to do internal controls remediation work. Most companies are concluding that the independence rules are not clear enough to permit this. These companies also are wary of paying additional non-audit fees to their auditors for investor relations’ purposes.]
