Audit & Accounting

Washington - The cost of compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley should drop significantly for some companies, according to a report commissioned by the Big Four firms.

With returns on both bonds and stocks dwindling, investors are seeking higher ground. Increasingly, that means that their money finds its way into alternative investments like hedge funds.

Washington - Nearly three-fourths of workers participating in a retirement savings poll said that employers' matching contributions of up to 5 percent of their salaries would greatly influence their decision to join a savings plan at work.

New York - Private securities class-action lawsuits spiked 16 percent from 2003 to 2004, with aggregate settlements topping $5 billion - the largest amount on record, according to a securities litigation study by Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It is common to parody accountants as tightly wrapped number-crunchers oriented more toward dollars than human emotions, religious beliefs, moral debates and political controversies.

A majority of Californians believe that they can do a better job of investing a portion of their Social Security payments than the government can -- even though 80 percent admit that they have little or no investing experience, according to a recent poll.

Norwalk, Conn. Insurance and reinsurance have recently made headline news, and it has not been pretty.

As of this writing, bankruptcy reform legislation had passed the Senate and was expected to move quickly through the House and be signed by President Bush. The Bankruptcy Abuse and Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 may already be law as you read this column.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was supposed to help investors, not sink companies.

Washington - The Securities and Exchange Commission in early April named agency veteran Meyer Eisenberg to the post of acting director of the commission's Division of Investment Management.