Sarbanes-Oxley effect on Non U.S. Public Companies?
August 30, 2009
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to briefly discuss the affect that Sarbanes-Oxley has on Non-U.S. Public Companies. The effects vary depending greatly on the type of business that the Foreign company is engaged in, it’s competition, and it’s desire to attract U.S. investment. As the Sarbanes-Oxley law and rules are relatively new and businesses are still developing tools and practices to best deal with them, this is a subject in constant flux. Reviewed are the hurdles that are in place to go from Private to Public, the push to go from Public back to Private, market expansion opportunities created for Non-U.S. companies, and business growth options related to compliance.
Sarbanes-Oxley effect on Non-U.S. Public Companies
In 2002, the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 Federal law was passed in the United States. This is often known as Sarbanes-Oxley or SOX. The reason for this was due to a number of large accounting scandals with large U.S. Publicly Traded companies and their accounting firms. These scandals caused significant investor concern and required immediate action to maintain investor confidence. The result was this law being developed to help prevent large accounting irregularities from occurring in the future and being allowed to pass audits. Greater responsibility was also placed on the Board and other company officers to be aware of their accounting processes and of company business taking place. One criticism of Sarbanes-Oxley has been that is has made doing business more costly and difficult for U.S. listed businesses and positively affected Non-U.S. companies. We will look at the various effects that Sarbanes-Oxley has had on Non-U.S. Public Companies.
Private to Public Hurdles
When one looks at Sarbanes-Oxley and its effect on Non-U.S. Public companies, the first thought that comes to mind when someone says that it...