Welcome to the nightmare. The biggest grip about Section 404 controls is that they will not get easier and will not reduce over time. No matter how long companies have to get used to it. Now five years into Sarbanes-Oxley and it looks like those concerns are justified.
In this interview, Sarbanes-Oxley co-author Michael Oxley acknowledges that Section 404 of the Act is too expensive, but insists it had nothing to do with him and he says giving Andersen was the worst decision in his all his years in Congress.
Here’s an unusual way for companies to go about compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. Instead of requiring management to assess the company's internal accounting activities, the company should check its internal control environment by having employees evaluate senior management's behavior and ethics.
The Securities and Exchange Commission looks like holding firm to its December 15 deadline for small public companies to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley. But the jury is still out on whether changes announced by the SEC will cut costs for small business.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has finally relaxed its contentious standard for auditing public companies. But the question is whether new eased-back standard for Section 404 is going to make everyone happy.
A new survey from Financial Executives International show that costs of compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley are down 23 per cent from last year. But look carefully at the numbers and you can see that Sarbanes-Oxley is still hurting business. Still, the numbers say it protects investors.
So the regulators are rolling back Sarbanes-Oxley. What does that mean for investors long-term? And how much of it should go? No simple solutions and here are some of the options.
Leon Gettler is a blogger and senior business journalist at The Age, specializing on management issues. His latest book, Organisations Behaving Badly focuses on the forces that lead smart executives into making dumb decisions.
