The always insightful Larry Ribstein takes it to out-of-date regulatory tactics.

-- MDT

Labels: Larry Ribstein, regulation

Worth checking out: page four's legislative report from the National Council of Investigation & Security Services. Just to give you a heads up on what information you may (or may not) have access to six months from now.

-- MDT

Labels: NCISS, Pursuit Magazine, regulation

Sounds like knuckling under to me...

Meanwhile Messers Bernanke and Paulson both call for more expansive regulation.

-- MDT

Labels: Hank Paulson, regulation

While one might argue that efforts are underway to curtail shareholder rights in the United States, the European Union appears headed in the opposite direction. One Tuesday EU government ministers approved new rules that would allow a variety of new voting powers for shareholders.

Specifically, the new regs will allow shareholders to vote electronically as well as by proxy on board elections, takeovers and other corporate actions. According to Colin Melvin, head of corporate governance and responsible investment at Hermes Pensions Management in London, ""We believe that this will enable shareholders to call directors to account more effectively and so enhance value at companies."

Get more detail via the IHT.

-- MDT

Labels: EU, regulation, shareholders

You'll want to take your time reading this post from Werner Kranenburg. Kranenburg builds a case, supported by some notable sources, that Sarbox isn't the boogeyman it has been made out to me with regard to U.S. capital market competitiveness. Rather, he argues that we should look to the current ill-advised conflation of domestic market regulation and foreign policy when endeavoring to understand Wallstreet's diminished appeal to international business.

Designed to help provide further security and sharper tools of influence of intractable governments abroad, capital market sanctions were embraced in the late 1990s as, well, warfare by other means. The SEC's Office of Global Security Risk, initiated under former SEC head William Donaldson administers capital market sanctions, but the roots of the policy go further back. The architect of the policy? U.S. congressman Christopher Cox. Cox now, of course, is better known as the chairman of the SEC.

Interesting stuff, with plenty of meat on the bone. Check out the full post from Kranenburg here. Also be sure to bookmark Werner's blog, With Vigour and Zeal, for further reading.

-- MDT

Labels: capital market sanctions, capital markets, Christopher Cox, regulation, SEC, SOX, With Vigor and Zeal

So says Peter Wyman, head of professional affairs at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, UK. In a recent interview, Wyman called existing company audit procedures inadequate and states that executives could indeed be using loopholes in the existing law to thwart regulation:

“At the level of an Enron or a WorldCom, I am pretty confident that the auditors would stumble across it in two or three years, but one would have no real confidence that they would come across it in year one unless they were incredibly lucky or the management made a mistake. The audit is simply not designed to deal with that.”

Read the rest of the Wyman interview via The Business. For more, check out his column from the CPA Journal.

-- MDT

Labels: accounting fraud, Enron, PWC, regulation