The Government Accountability Office has released an updated listing of public companies that have made a financial restatement announcement because of financial reporting fraud or accounting errors.
The GAO released its original report to Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes, D-Md., on July 24. That listing, entitled " Financial Restatements: Update of Public Company Trends, Market Impacts and Regulatory Enforcement Activities," contained some details around 1,390 financial restatement announcements between July 1, 2002, and Sept. 30, 2005 that meet the restatement criteria.
Sarbanes then requested a limited update of that database for the period between Oct. 1, 2005, through June 30, 2006. The GAO used Lexis-Nexis, an to systematically search for restatement announcements using keywords to collect information on another 396 restatements announced by 360 public companies.
The updated database, along with the database included in the original July 2006 report, can be viewed at
Legislation bearing the senator's name, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, has been under fire for its internal controls provisions, which some smaller public companies have loudly complained are too financially burdensome to meet.
