|  | | 2007 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
SEC Penalties Fall Amid `New Ethos' on Company Fines (Update1)
David Scheer and Jesse Westbrook
Bloomberg. November 19, 2007
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EXCERPT: Sanctions imposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fell to the lowest level since 2002 as the agency brought fewer billion-dollar accounting-fraud cases and operated under new policies for fining companies. The SEC, led by Chairman Christopher Cox, extracted about $1.6 billion in fines and illicit profits in the year ending Sept. 30, compared with more than $3 billion in each of the previous three years, according to a report the regulator released Nov. 15. In 2002, when Congress passed the Sarbanes- Oxley corporate governance law, the total was about $1.4 billion. ``The cases they're bringing these days are much smaller,'' said James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who isn't related to the SEC chairman. The commission has adopted ``a new ethos about penalties,'' based on the concern that ``savaging'' companies with fines amounts to punishing their investors, he said. |
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