SEC extends Sarbanes-Oxley internal audit deadline for small firms, foreign firms News
SEC extends Sarbanes-Oxley internal audit deadline for small firms, foreign firms

[JURIST] The US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website] on Wednesday introduced plans to give small public US companies and some foreign companies [SEC releases, PDF] additional time to comply [press release] with restrictive internal control requirements relating to financial reporting. The requirements were adopted by Congress in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act [PDF text; SEC materials] in an effort to protect investors, and gave companies until fiscal years ending on or after July 15, 2007 to implement internal controls to ensure accurate financial reporting and to seek confirmation of the controls by an external auditor, but the new requirements would extend the deadline [JURIST report] until December 15, 2007 for small companies. Under the plan, the deadline for firms' outside auditors to evaluate the internal controls will also be extended until December 15, 2008. For foreign firms, the SEC plan would extend the deadline for internal control requirements until July 15, 2007.

In May, the SEC announced that all publicly traded firms, including small and mid-size firms, would be subject to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act [press release; JURIST report], despite complaints from small companies that the rules would be prohibitively expensive. The rules have prompted many small businesses to go private [JURIST report] in order to avoid the costs of compliance, according to a report [PDF text] from the Government Accountability Office. Dow Jones News has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.