|  | | 2006 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Enron’s Lasting Influence
Staff Writer
AccountingWeb.com. January 10, 2006
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EXCERPT: With the former Enron executives finally coming to trial, we are reminded again of the long shadow cast by the implosion of the company that helped enact the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002. Section 404 has added teeth to SOX, making regulation more expensive and staff intensive and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has been created to aid in the governance and enforcement of the accounting industry. Audit committees have attained more important positions in corporate structures and are more attuned to avoid the conflicts of being both auditor and consultant for the same company. At the same time, with the collapse of Arthur Andersen, the consolidation of the Big Five to the Big Four now have four accounting firms doing the work for more than 90 percent of publicly traded companies, according to the New York Times. “We certainly have seen some improvements in governance, but we’ve also seen some areas of no improvement, and some areas where things have gone backwards,” said Lynn E. Turner, speaking to the New York Times. Turner is the former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and now managing director of research at Glass, Lewis & Company. The outright accounting scandals of WorldCom, Tyco, and Adelphia have now morphed into companies making financial restatements. Glass, Lewis & Company reports that earnings restatements numbered 1,031 through the end of October 2005, compared with 650 for 2004 and 270 in 2001, according to the New York Times. John C. Coffee, speaking in the Los Angeles Times, said the restatements were not necessarily evidence of fraud but shows the tighter focus of accountants. Also, more than 1,250 public companies, out of around 15,000 in total, reported material weaknesses in their internal corporate controls in October 2005. Some 232 other companies reported less serious, but significant deficiencies in their internal controls, according to the New York Times. In contrast, a new study shows that the number of securities class-action suites has come down 17 percent in 2005. The 176 filed in 2005 is the lowest since 1997, according to Cornerstone Research and Stanford Law School. 1998 saw 239 suites, the highest number in recent years, according to the Los Angeles Times. Christopher Cox, chairman of the SEC, said in a late December interview with the New York Times, that he agreed that more should be done, disclosing his intention to lead a commission effort to rewrite rules forcing companies to provide more financial details concerning executive pay. |
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