Earlier this week, the SEC charged Lucent and nine current and former executives with securities fraud. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Lucent’s violations of GAAP were due to the “fraudulent and reckless actions of the defendants and deficient internal controls that led to numerous accounting errors by others.” But the severity of the fine was […]
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Posted inFrom the Archive
Expensing: Going Beyond The Minimum Requirements
This is Part Two of a two-part series written by Miller and Bahnson. Part One appeared in the last edition of Compliance Week, on May 11. Our previous column explained how FASB’s proposed new standard on option expensing is outmoded and incomplete (see box at right). The main problem is that it reports only the […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Pension Funding Disclosures Backed By New Penalties
RELATED RESOURCES href=”http://www.pbgc.gov/laws/lawsregs/federalreg/050704.tinyproprule.pdf”> href=”http://www.pbgc.gov/laws/lawsregs/federalreg/050704.tinyproprule.pdf”>Details On Assessment, Relief Of Penalties src=”/images/pdf.gif” border=0> href=”http://www.complianceweek.com/s/documents/wilshire-051804.pdf”>View Corporate Funding Survey on Pensions The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal entity that protects retirement incomes in pension plans, last week unveiled new penalties for companies that fail to inform participants of underfunded pension plans. The penalties could impact hundreds of companies; […]
Posted inInternal Controls
Protiviti, Stellent To Collaborate On Compliance Platform
Stellent, a $78.5 million content management company that addresses SOX 404 through a “Sarbanes-Oxley Solution,” will announce this week that it plans to collaborate on a compliance platform with internal audit and risk consulting firm Protiviti. The co-marketed solution will combine Protiviti’s industry expertise with Stellent’s content management framework. In a recent conversation with Compliance […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Tech Employees Swamp FASB With Option Comments
Three weeks ago, we reported that one-third of the comment letters pouring into FASB regarding its stock option expensing proposal were from Cisco employees. That number has increased to over 78 percent; of the 2,364 comment letters posted on FASB’s site at press time, 1,841 were from Cisco employees. Another 171 were from Intel employees. […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Why Do Corporate Managers Misstate Financial Statements?
Study by three professors at Texas A&M University analyzes the role of option compensation, corporate governance, and other factors in financial misstatements.
Posted inTechnology
Internal Control Software Firms Name Additional Clients
Nth Orbit recently announced that $3.2 billion beverage bottler PepsiAmericas and $34.7 million semiconductor equipment company AXT will use the company’s Certus software for their SOX 404 compliance efforts. Over $1 billion is expected to be spent on SOX-compliance technologies this year, according to AMR research. Durkin According to PepsiAmericas EVP and CFO Michael Durkin, […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Proxy Access: Not So Fast
It’s beginning to look like the SEC will trot out its final rules regarding proxy access a little later than experts had anticipated. For awhile, there was talk that it would come sometime in May, after being delayed once earlier in the year. However, this timetable does not appear to be materializing. According to an […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Don’t Stop When You Comply With FASB Options Standard
This is Part One of a two-part series written by Miller and Bahnson. Part Two appeared in the May 18 edition of Compliance Week. On March 31, amid much fanfare—both cheers and jeers—the FASB finally issued its long-awaited exposure draft of a new standard that would mandate recognizing an expense when stock options are granted. […]
Posted inInternal Controls
39 Internal Control Disclosures In April
According to a review of regulatory filings during the month of April, 39 companies disclosed material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls, or provided updates on the status of their control-improvement processes. That number is up from 28 similar disclosures in March, 18 in February, and 23 in January. (See box at right for […]
