With expensive accounting rules, an increased threat of litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for some firms, the once prestigious New York Stock Exchange and other American markets have become unattractive to Germany’s biggest companies. Daimler and Deutsche Telekom have fled this year and the few remaining are likely to follow.
Sarbanes-Oxley was bad…
Named for the law’s co-sponsors, Paul Sarbanes, a Democratic Senator from Maryland, and Michael Oxley, a Republican Congressman from Ohio, the law tightened accounting practices to prevent companies from cheating on investors. From the start, companies voiced their displeasure with the high costs required to comply with the reforms. In one provision, companies were obligated to hire an independent auditor to monitor and report on the company’s financial reporting. The regulation was meant to protect investors from fraud, create greater transparency of a firm’s risks and to expose accounting firms that were helping companies cook their own books.
And its going to get worse:
“That’s the real issue here,” says Miers, who worked for the SEC’s division of corporation finance from 1994 to 1997. “What the SEC fully doesn’t grasp to today is that dealing with the US regulation system is a nightmare,” he says. “It’s another reason to run to the exit door.”
Hope and change… Hope and change….
