RIP, Paul Sarbanes
Pour one out today for your homie, Paul Sarbanes, because a lot of you just might owe your gainful employment to him and Michael Oxley, who passed away in 2016. Here are some excerpts from the Washington Post obit today about the former Maryland Democratic senator: Paul S. Sarbanes, who as a young Maryland congressman […]
Sarbanes-Oxley 15 Years Later: Accountants Need to Speak Up Now More Than Ever
This Sunday, July 30, 2017, marks the 15th anniversary of the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) of 2002. SOX emerged after the “smartest guys in the room” caused Enron to implode, and WorldCom magically erased billions in earnings overnight. The scandals shook the public’s confidence in the reliability of financial reporting and led to […]
NYSE President Not Sure About All This Auditing
Over at the House Committee on Financial Services, some opposition to Sarbanes-Oxley has come up in a hearing called “The Cost of Being a Public Company in Light of Sarbanes-Oxley and the Federalization of Corporate Governance.” The gist of it is this — some people think regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley have made it too difficult to […]
Supreme Court Unhooks Fisherman From Conviction Under SOX Anti-Shredding Provision
A commercial fisherman who was snagged with a federal crime under 18 U. S. C. §1519 — aka Sarbanes-Oxley's anti-shredding provision — because he threw back some undersized red grouper got his day at the Supreme Court and won. Talk about a keeper. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her opinion from the bench, stating "Fish one may […]
Ex-Enron CFO Sorry About Sarbanes-Oxley, Guys
Enron's former CFO was at the University of New Mexico last week speaking about, well, fraud and stuff because that's pretty much the only thing you can do when you're a well-known convicted felon who played a part in bringing down your former company and a prestigious accounting firm. Water under the bridge and all […]
Now We’re Creatively Interpreting Sarbanes-Oxley to Include Fish
Jonathan Weil enlightens us via Bloomberg View: There is a delightful article about a fishy case before the U.S. Supreme Court that deserves a broader audience than it probably got yesterday on the Law Professor Blogs Network. Here's the opening paragraph by Ellen Podgor, a professor at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida, […]
Here Are a Couple of Charts That Sum Up Auditor Fees since 2002
Courtesy of our friends at Audit Analytics, who have just issued a new study evaluating the trends of audit fees and non-audit fees earned from accelerated filers over the past 11 years. As you can see, it appears that audit firms have found a comfort zone in its split between audit/non-audit fees. And in this […]
JOBS Act Hasn’t Encouraged as Many Companies to Avoid Sarbanes-Oxley as Some Would Have Hoped
Before the House of Representatives got down with some Audit Integrity whatever whatever, we had the Jumpstarting Our Business Startups Act as an example of Congressional wading into the accounting/auditing regulatory waters. If you need a refresher, the JOBS Act flew through Congress and the got the President's signature last year despite a lot of people saying […]
“Emerging Growth Company” Still Working on the “Emerging Growth” Part
Yesterday we discussed Ignite Restaurant Group, an emerging growth company ("EGC") under the JOBS Act, and their battles with financial reporting. Today we were introduced to another EGC, this time the company is WeRvaluecoupons.com who filed its Form S-1 with the SEC earlier this month. WeRvalue isn't quite as far along in the "emerging" process […]
This is a Makeshift Card for Sarbanes-Oxley’s Anniversary That You Should All Sign
As we mentioned, today is the 10th anniversary of Sarbanes-Oxley. Or was it yesterday? I guess it depends on who you ask. Technically, it was enacted on July 29th and President Bush signed it into law on July 30th. Personally, I prefer it to be the 29th because since I've started writing for this here […]
Scoring Sarbanes-Oxley
As we pointed out in this morning's roundup, the New York Times' Room for Debate is discussing the success/failure of Sarbanes-Oxley. Sunday marks SarbOx's 10th birthday so naturally people in the accounting and compliance world are getting all nostalgic about it and yeah, okay, nostalgia can be fun sometimes. The Times had four contributors in […]
An Open Letter To the PCAOB From the Going Concern Comment Section
I believe this particular PCAOB-hostile grunt has spoken: Dear Mr. G – I hate to break this to you, but accountants do not respect the PCAOB. We HATE the PCAOB. This organization does nothing but bring misery to our lives, for no matter how good our work product is, this group comes along and finds […]
Someone Convinced KPMG and GE to End Their Little Loan Staff Arrangement
Last fall, we reported that KPMG had issued an internal preservation notice to its employees in regards to "General Electric's Loan Staff Arrangements." As you may remember, this arrangement consisted of KPMG employees being loaned to GE to help supplement the work of the world's best tax law firm. Oh, and KPMG is the auditor […]