Despite corporations gaining more experience with complying with the mandates of Sarbanes-Oxley, concerns over the burdens of its implementation have grown over the past several years.
In a keynote before the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Emil Henry, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, reiterated to attendees that due to the compliance burdens of SOX 404, there have been “large numbers of IPOs being listed on non-U.S. exchanges.”
Recently, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stressed the need to keep U.S. markets competitive, fueled by a recent statistic from the New Stock Exchange stating that nine of the 10 largest initial public offerings in 2006 year were executed overseas.
Henry, a 20-year veteran of Wall Street prior to coming to the Treasury, said that he experienced the repercussions of Enron and WorldCom firsthand, and called Sarbanes-Oxley an important and good law with “a much-needed restorative impact. “
He added that although the Treasury has not gotten involved in the debate over SOX, “it’s something that we will follow closely.”
