Download or read book Market Uncertainty and Disclosure of Internal Control Deficiencies Under the Sarbanes Oxley Act written by Yongtae Kim and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines cross-sectional differences in stock market reactions to the disclosure of internal control deficiencies under Section 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We hypothesize that the market punishment for internal control problems will be less severe for internal control disclosure that helps reduce market uncertainty around the disclosure. We also predict that such a relation is dependent on the types of disclosure and the market's prior knowledge of the credibility of firms' financial reporting. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that when firms disclose their internal control deficiencies, their abnormal stock returns are negatively associated with changes in market uncertainty (e.g., changes in the standard deviations of daily stock returns) around the disclosure. We also find that the impact of the uncertainty reduction is greater for voluntary disclosures of non-material weakness, especially those made in the context of previous suspicious events. The negative impact of changes in market uncertainty on the abnormal stock returns remains intact even after controlling for possible simultaneity. An analysis using financial analysts' earnings forecasts dispersion as an alternative proxy for uncertainty confirms the results.

Download or read book Market Reaction to Control Deficiency Disclosures Under the Sarbanes Oxley Act written by Parveen P. Gupta and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sections 302 and 404 of the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act require firms to periodically assess and report control deficiencies to the audit committee as well as to the SEC. Section 302 specifically directs company management to identify and report control deficiencies while Section 404 provides the discipline that forces companies to take the control assessment and reporting task seriously. Importantly, external auditors are required to opine separately on the effectiveness of their client's system of internal control over financial reporting and issue an adverse opinion on internal control in the presence of even a single material weakness. Prior to being mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, management was not required to assess and report on the state of internal controls in their company. Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) #60, which provided guidance to the external auditors on these matters, afforded them a great deal of flexibility and judgment not only in determining what constituted a reportable condition but also limited their disclosure only to the audit committee of the board. In a recent speech, Donald T. Nicolaisen, the SEC's Chief Accountant, remarks that these new requirements are not only a major financial but also a significant cultural endeavor for registrants in the U.S. and abroad. Consequently, these new requirements have drawn uproar and concern from companies of all sizes and market capitalization. Given the outcry from companies and regulatory assertions that these disclosures are the best thing that has ever happened to the capital markets, we examine whether such control deficiency disclosures convey valuation-relevant information to the market. This issue is important because increasing disclosure requirements without any attendant effect on valuation would impose unnecessary deadweight costs. The disclosures employed in our study were not mandatory under Section 404 at the time our sample firms made them. While there may be many reasons why our sample firms report these deficiencies early, these disclosures may portend the effect to be faced by other firms when the Section 404 rule becomes binding. Consistent with the regulatory assertions, we find that such disclosures are associated with a negative stock price reaction, on average, indicating that such disclosures do indeed convey valuation-relevant information. This reaction is mitigated to some extent, but not fully, if management also discloses that remediation steps have been taken to correct the weaknesses identified in the disclosures. Additionally, the price reaction is less negative for firms employing a Big Four auditing firm. Conversely, the reaction is more negative for firms with larger current liabilities relative to total assets, which suggests that control weaknesses may have implications for increased default risk.

Download or read book How to Comply with Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 written by Michael J. Ramos and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-03-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed specifically for Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance, How to Comply with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 features: A step-by-step approach to engagement performance Original material from a leading expert in auditing and accounting Practice aids, including forms, checklists, illustrations, diagrams, and tables In-depth explanations to help professionals understand how best to approach the internal control engagement Examples and action plans providing blueprints for implementing requirements of the Act Order your copy today!

Download or read book SOX 404 for Small Publicly Held Companies written by Robert J. Sonnelitter, Jr. and published by CCH. This book was released on 2007 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CCH's SOX 404 for Small, Publicly Held Companies enables you to successfully and efficiently make the internal control assessment required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In particular, this book will help non-accelerated filers-those companies that have outstanding securities with a market value of less than $75 million-with the challenging and time-consuming SOX 404 requirements. This addition to the CCH reference library gives you the tools for the evaluation, planning documentation, risk assessment, testing, and reporting necessary for successful compliance with Section 404. It focuses on the SEC's rules for an assessment of internal controls and the PCAOB's requirements for independent auditors. The free, companion CD-ROM accompanying this book includes workpapers and checklists as well as primary source material from the SEC and PCAOB to make your research and reporting as quick and cost-efficient as possible. SOX 404 for Small, Publicly Held Companies and the accompanying CD-ROM address all that is necessary to perform an assessment of internal controls over financial reporting as well as an assessment of disclosure controls. Book jacket.

Download or read book Internal Control Weaknesses and Information Uncertainty written by Messod D. Beneish and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze a sample of 330 firms making unaudited disclosures required by Section 302 and 383 firms making audited disclosures required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. We find that Section 302 disclosures are associated with negative announcement abnormal returns of -1.8 percent, and that firms experience an abnormal increase in equity cost of capital of 68 basis points. We conclude that Section 302 disclosures are informative and point to lower credibility of disclosing firms' financial reporting. In contrast, we find that Section 404 disclosures have no noticeable impact on stock prices or firms' cost of capital. Further, we find that auditor quality attenuates the negative response to Section 302 disclosures and that accelerated filers - larger firms required to file under Section 404 - have significantly less negative returns (-1.10 percent) than non-accelerated filers (-4.22 percent). The findings have implications for the debate about whether to implement a scaled securities regulation system for smaller public companies: material weakness disclosures are more informative for smaller firms that likely have higher pre-disclosure information uncertainty.

Download or read book Market Reactions to the Disclosure of Internal Control Weaknesses and to the Characteristics of Those Weaknesses Under Section 302 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 written by Jacqueline S. Hammersley and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under Section 302 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, officers must evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls quarterly. We examine the stock price reaction to management's disclosure of internal control weaknesses and to their characteristics, controlling for other material announcements are made during the event window. We find evidence suggesting that some characteristics of the internal control weaknesses - their severity, management's conclusion regarding the effectiveness of the controls, their auditability, and how vague the disclosures are - are informative. In subsequent analyses, we find that the relation between returns and auditability holds for significant deficiencies and control deficiencies as well as for material weaknesses. However, the relation between returns and how vague the disclosure is is driven by the observations with material weaknesses. This suggests that the information content of internal control weakness disclosures depends on the severity of the internal control weakness.

Download or read book The Disclosure of Material Weaknesses in Internal Control After the Sarbanes Oxley Act written by Weili Ge and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper focuses on a sample of 261 companies that have disclosed at least one material weakness in internal control in their SEC filings after the effective date of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Based on the descriptive material weakness disclosures provided by management, we find that poor internal control is usually related to an insufficient commitment of resources for accounting controls. Material weaknesses in internal control tend to be related to deficient revenue recognition policies, lack of segregation of duties, deficiencies in the period-end reporting process and accounting policies, and inappropriate account reconciliation. The most common account-specific material weaknesses occur in the current accrual accounts, such as the accounts receivable and inventory accounts. Material weakness disclosures by management also frequently describe internal control problems in complex accounts, such as the derivative and income tax accounts. In our statistical analysis, we find that disclosing a material weakness is positively associated with business complexity (e.g., multiple segments and foreign currency), negatively associated with firm size (e.g., market capitalization), and negatively associated with firm profitability (e.g., return on assets).

Download or read book OMB Circular A 123 and Sarbanes Oxley written by Cornelius E. Tierney and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2006-07-28 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is A-123 different from Section 404 of the SOX Act? What is required of federal agencies with the revision of A-123? The definitive guide for federal compliance with OMB Circular A-123 and SOX Section 404, OMB Circular A-123 and Sarbanes-Oxley: Management's Responsibility for Internal Control in Federal Agencies leads readers through every step of the planning, evaluation, testing, and reporting/collecting of processes associated with OMB Circular A-123 and SOX Section 404 compliance, including: * Internal control criteria * Internal control assessment: project planning * Identifying significant control objectives * Documentation of significant controls * Testing and evaluating entity-level controls and activity-level controls The result of numerous consultations over many years with accountants, auditors, financial managers, and systems consultants specializing in the financial management issues of the federal government, this hands-on guide quickly brings you up to speed on the latest revisions and rules in federal financial internal control requirements.

Download or read book Internal Control Weakness and Cost of Equity written by Maria Ogneva and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires every company to report on the effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting. Section 404 has arguably been the most controversial provision of SOX, with many registrants complaining that the high cost of compliance outweighs its benefits. In contrast, the SEC and others have argued that the Section 404 provisions are beneficial to the capital markets and will eventually reduce the cost of capital. In this paper, we examine the association between implied cost of equity and internal control effectiveness for firms that filed Section 404 reports with the SEC. We find marginally higher cost of equity for firms disclosing material weakness in internal controls than for a sample of firms disclosing no material weaknesses. The differences in cost of equity disappear after controlling for firm characteristics associated with firms disclosing material weaknesses. Overall, our results are consistent with internal control weakness identified under Section 404 not being directly associated, on average, with higher implied cost of equity.

Download or read book Disclosure of Internal Control Weaknesses and the Capital Market Valuation of Earnings Surprise After the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 written by Professor Qi Wang and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Disclosure of Internal Control Weaknesses and the Capital Market Valuation of Earnings Surprise After the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002" by Qi, Wang, 王祁, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. DOI: 10.5353/th_b4129055 Subjects: Corporations - Valuation Corporate profits Corporations - Auditing - Law and legislation - United States

Download or read book Guide to Internal Controls written by James Hamilton and published by Wolters Kluwer. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Guide to Internal Controls Under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Second Edition examines the mandate of Section 404 and subsequent rulemaking and guidance. The SEC rules implementing the statute require the management of public companies

Download or read book The world price of earnings opacity written by Uptal Bhattacharya and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Wealth Change and Redistribution Effects of Sarbanes Oxley Internal Control Disclosures written by Gus De Franco and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This article provides evidence about the wealth change and redistribution effects of Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which requires that management assess and publicly report on the effectiveness of their firm's internal controls, and that auditors publicly provide an opinion on management's assessment, as well as the effectiveness of the internal controls. This section is the most expensive, burdensome and contentious part of SOX - mainly because the benefits are elusive, and according to some critics, non-existent. We analyze a sample of 102 firms that report a deficiency in their internal controls between November 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004 and that have no confounding news during the event window. We find that the cumulative size-adjusted abnormal returns are -1.8% during the three-day event window for firms that report internal control deficiencies. This economically-significant wealth change supports the idea that investors value internal control news and that they are not (at least fully) aware of these deficiencies prior to the disclosures. We confirm these results for a small sample of firms reporting deficiencies in the first calendar quarter of 2005. More importantly, using trading data from the NYSE TAQ database, we find that small- (large-) investor net buying is positively (not) associated with returns. More specifically, it is small-investor net selling that is driving the negative returns. These results are consistent with the redistribution of wealth from large to small investors during the announcement period. In summary, our results support the conjectures made by regulators underlying the regulation and show that small investors benefit more from these disclosures than large investors.

Download or read book Regulatory Monitoring Under the Sarbanes Oxley Act written by Cindy R. Alexander and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the economic relevance of the factors set forth under Section 408 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to guide the enhanced regulatory scrutiny of public company financial disclosures, as required under the Act. We interpret two of the factors, volatility and firm size, as predictors of a public company's relative risk of non-compliance or the prospective loss to investors, conditional upon non-compliance. We use disclosures of material weaknesses in internal controls under Section 404 as indicators of the potential for non-compliance. Our evidence is that the Section 408 factors that we associate with a relatively high risk of non-compliance - high stock-price volatility, and whether a company is emerging with a disparate PE ratio - are good predictors of reported material weaknesses in internal controls. In addition, while Section 408 calls for enhanced review of large firms - those with high market capitalization and a material affect on the economy - we find that relatively few large firms have disclosed material weaknesses in internal controls. The large firms that have disclosed material weaknesses, however, comprise 92% of the market capitalization of all companies disclosing a material weakness. In contrast with the focus of the public debate on the compliance problems of smaller public companies, our evidence points to high volatility as a stronger predictor of compliance problems under the Act than small firm size. Finally, we discuss alternate explanations for our findings and the potential for unintended consequences for shareholders.

Download or read book Complying with Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 written by Lynford Graham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A step-by-step approach for planning and performing an assessment of internal controls Filled with specific guidance for small-business compliance to SEC and PCAOB requirements relating to Sarbanes-Oxley 404, Complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404: A Guide for Small Publicly Held Companies provides you with specific guidance on working with auditors to achieve benefits and cost reductions. This practical guide helps you knowledgeably interpret and conform to Sarbanes-Oxley 404 compliance and features: Clear, jargon-free coverage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and how it affects you Links to current guidance online Specific guidance to companies on how to work with auditors to achieve benefits and cost reductions Coverage of IT and IT general controls Examples and action plans providing blueprints for implementing requirements of the act Easy-to-understand coverage of the requirements of the SEC and PCAOB Discussion of the requirements for assessing internal control effectiveness A look at how the new guidance will reduce your costs In-depth explanations to help professionals understand how best to approach the internal control engagement Practice aids, including forms, checklists, illustrations, diagrams, and tables Continuing to evolve and bring about business and cultural change, this area of auditing and corporate governance is demystified in Complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404: A Guide for Small Publicly Held Companies, your must-have, must-own guide to SOX 404 implementation and an effective tool and reference guide for every corporate manager.

Download or read book Benefits and Costs of Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 B Exemption written by Weili Ge and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of publicly traded U.S. firms are exempt from auditor oversight of internal control effectiveness disclosures (Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002). We provide initial estimates of the measurable benefits and costs of this exemption. We measure the benefit of exemption with audit fee savings, which we estimate to be an aggregate $388 million from 2007 through 2014 for our sample of exempt firms. The key concern of exemption is internal control misreporting (IC misreporting; i.e., firms with ineffective internal controls erroneously disclosing effective internal controls). We estimate that 9.3 percent of exempt firms are IC misreporters, and that 404(b) compliance would lower this IC misreporting to 5.8 percent. IC misreporting imposes at least two measurable costs on current and prospective shareholders: lower operating performance due to non-remediation, and market values that fail to reflect a firm's underlying internal control status. We calculate the cost of 404(b) exemption from 2007 through 2014 to be an aggregate $719 million in lower future earnings due to non-remediation, and a $935 million delay in aggregate market value decline due to the failure to disclose ineffective internal controls. Although the measurable costs of exemption exceed the measurable benefits, the audit fee savings benefit shareholders of all exempt firms, whereas costs are borne by shareholders of only a fraction of exempt firms (the IC misreporters). In addition to providing initial evidence on measurable benefits and costs of internal control disclosure regulation, our study provides a tool for identifying the firms most at risk of inaccurately disclosing internal control effectiveness.

Download or read book Sox 404 for Small Publicly Held Companies 2007 written by Robert J Sonnelitter and published by Cch. This book was released on 2006-11-16 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: