Compliance Sarbanes Oxley

During the 2001 recession. sarbanes oxley Act and McCain Feingold Act.

I dunno, Im only answering so I can come back and find out the real answer.
An adult observation from the time period: Dub-ya was always on TV saying ‘its getting better’ ‘its gettin good all over’ ’stuff’s gettin better’…Im not real sure where ‘its’ ‘all over’ and ’stuff’ was. Cuz pretty much everywhere I went things were kinda the same … Kinda get the same feeling listening to Obama too.

BTW, don’t follow the link above.

Don’t know what you’re looking for with regards to SarbOx, but here is the main website:

http://www.sarbanes-oxley.com/

Info on the history and implications:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act

I’ve read all the info about the act and need some challenging questions to adress the classmates. What would be good ones?
Thanks
What-if questions are alright as long as they are not too long to confuse the students. General questions focusing on the new regulations and how it impacts business in US and the stock market should be ok. Thank you for the input

Do you mean questions with right or wrong answers or policy level questions?

A fact pattern with right or wrong answers:

Company X is 12 months away from filing its initial registration statement to get listed. It wishes to list on the NYSE. A family run business, Company X currently has a board consisting of Professor X, the company’s founder, Psylocke, his wife and co-founder, Magneto, the company’s brother and an attorney at the law firm that Company X uses and Cyclops, the CEO of the company. Company X’s major charitable recipient is Professor X’s School for the Gifted, a non-profit secretive school for the specially abled in Connectivut. Cyclops in addition has a $1,000,000 loan from the company for the purchase of specialty eye wear. Their current CFO is Cycloo’s ex-wife, Jean Grey, who used to be their outside lead auditor for the Phoenix Consulting Firm, who provides both auditing and IT security services for Company X. As the new consultants for Company X, you have been asked by Marvel Bank, their selected underwriters, to help prepare them for becoming public. What would you recommend in terms of board, finances and affiliate relationships and what disclosures will be necessary and when?

Policy level questions:

In recent months several commentators have pointed at the increased number of listings in the London Stock Exchange as evidence that SOX has made the US capital markets overly regulated and makes the country less financially competitive when it comes to the highly lucrative business of listing companies. In addition, a number of small public companies have argued that the 404 certification requirements of the act add undue cost to their small internal compliance budgets. What are your thoughts on those criticisms and what, if anything, would you recommend be changed?

In other words, what would motivate these companies to spend to upgrade their systems for these compliances?

Private companies will need to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements if they anticipate becoming a public company in the future — or being acquired by a public company. Sarbanes-Oxley requirements will also raise the bar for corporate compliance controls and governance among stakeholders of private companies.

Why can’t ethics replace internal controls?
Thank you for all of your help!

For your first question, the act has demanded that management assess its own internal controls over financial reporting which leads them to mitigate risks of material mistatements due to errors or frauds.

For the second one, ethics cant replace internal controls due to two reasons:

1. Mistatements due to errors are not caused by lack of ethics but lack of proper error mitigating controls (preventative and detective measures).

2. Management may include unethical people and you can’t get as much assurance that management is ethical as you can from testing to see if a control is working.

the act required the management of the publicly owned companies to have risk and set the outside auditors as independant in assessing the risk. the act has a financial burden on companies. the act has legal challenges which are also costly. all of this should be reflected in the financial statement.

What exactly happened that caused the sarbanes-oxley act to happen?

The Act came in the wake of a series of corporate financial scandals, including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom (now MCI). Named after sponsors Senator Paul Sarbanes (D–Md.) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R–Oh.), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0.

After all, Sarbanes-Oxley forced a certain degree of accountability and transparency onto companies. Would there have been more companies like AIG, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Fannie Mae etc. if the Act hadn’t been introduced, thus making the recession even worse?

Would you go as far as to say Pres. Bush even deserves credit for making the recession not as bad as it could have been?

Everyone knows that act was a joke considering it has never been implemented. Hello – gas prices were at 1.10/gal when Bush took office and over $3 when he left – they tripled in 8 years causing massive inflation and the tanking of the economy – something we’ve never experienced before. I’ll give him 100% credit for it.

Is there any requirement for Telecom Operators to have a multi-vendor network in order to be Sarbanes-Oxley Compliant?

Check with their HR department.

My company has been meeting Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) requirements through manual spreadsheet-based processes. We want to automate these processes. What kind of technology is out there now to help with SOX compliance?

It is difficult to provide non-repudiation within spreadsheets in a scalable context. To replace spreadsheets look towards governance, risk and compliance (GRC) management platforms. Vendors in this space include Axentis, BWise, MEGA, JmeSoftwares. They are a much better choice over the use of spreadsheets for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.