EY Threatens to Raise Audit Fees ‘Cause the Mean Ole Government Keeps Busting Their Balls
I buried this story in Footnotes last Friday but thought it deserved its own post because A) it’s interesting and B) Bramwell is on vacation this week, leaving me to run the show and find enough crap to write about. So here we are. Sky News reported last week that they obtained a letter from […]
Some Companies Unsure About This New COSO Internal Control Framework
Some dates are not set in stone, like the day of the week I decide to clean the cat fountain or change my sheets. Others, like the day I need to pay my rent and the fiscal year-end on or after December 15, 2014 are not so variable. When it comes to COSO's new 2013 […]
ICYMI: Here Are Some Accounting Execs Talking About How Useless XBRL Is
The mandatory use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language by large public companies began in 2009 and was extended to smaller filers in 2011. And while it has made searching for SEC filings a breeze, it was the sincere hope of the SEC that XBRL would also be a serviceable tool for companies to do similarly […]
This Is as Good as It Gets for Sarbanes-Oxley 404 Compliance
Six years and everyone pretty much has this down. Arthur Andersen (the man, not the firm) would be so proud.
Just don’t get lazy.
In the sixth year of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 requirements, companies with a public float greater than $75 million reduced their rate of adverse opinions from 5 percent in the fifth year to only 2.4 percent in the most recent year. Even if companies that have missed their filing deadlines turn in adverse opinions, it would bump the rate to only 2.8 percent, said Don Whalen, director of research for Audit Analytics.
Over the six reporting years that public companies have been filing the reports, adverse opinions have steadily fallen from a high of 16.9 percent for fiscal years ending after Nov. 15, 2004, to the current low of 2.4 percent, said Whalen. “It’s getting to the point where you wonder if it can even be reduced any more,” he said.