February 2008

>>treasuryandrisk.com

Audit Busters — Not every management is throwing up its hands and assuming they will not see savings from AS5 this year. Alfa Corp. has installed a new ERM solution with which it will go to battle with any auditor who challenges Alfa’s ability to quantify and prioritize risk        By Dave Lindorff

Connie Whitecotton, chief risk and compliance officer at $815 million Alfa Corp., remembers well the first year she took responsibility for the company’s Sarbanes-Oxley 404 audit. It was 2005, and the exercise ended up costing $1.3 million in audit fees—more than three times the auditor’s initial $400,000 estimate, and almost double what the job had cost in 2004. “I was outraged!” she recalls. Only a year later, however, she got the same job done for $825,000, and this year, she expects auditing hours to be slashed by 60%, bringing total 404 compliance costs for Alfa way down.   read more

February 2008

>>treasuryandrisk.com

Defining Principles — Principles-based accounting may be the way to go, but without some clarification U.S.investors could lose a lot of corporate disclosure       

By Jerry Hutter

Buried in the recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) publication of
guidance for management on Sarbanes-Oxley was the admonition that companies
should start to follow principles-based accounting, as long as it is compliant with
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Unfortunately, at this time, there is no meaningful definition of principles-based accounting for an executive to follow. Many people point to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as a model and want our system to converge with these standards. The concept sounds good in theory, but could result in either weaker U.S. rules or with so many exceptions that convergence would occur in name only.    read more

September 7, 2007
Technology Tools: Compliance (pdf)

>>financialexecutives.org

CFO Strategies Inc. has announced the launch of SOX Compliance Manager™, its first product, a comprehensive Web-based toolkit that it says significantly reduces the cost and complexity associated with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

September 6, 2007
Local firm helps companies handle Sarbanes-Oxley stresses (pdf)

>>sdranchcoastnews.com

The law is known as Sarbanes-Oxley, and at the time it was passed President George W. Bush hailed it as introducing some of the most sweeping reforms of American business practices since the New Deal.

July 24, 2007
CFO Strategies introduces SOX Compliance Manager software (pdf)

>>SDDT.com

San Diego-based CFO Strategies Inc. today announced the launch of SOX Compliance Manager, a Web-based toolkit that aims to reduce the cost and complexity associated with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

July 23, 2007
Entrepreneur Profile — Jerry L. Hutter (pdf)

>>SDBJ.com

With more than 40 years of accounting experience, it’s no surprise that Jerry Hutter’s latest venture, CFO Strategies Inc., is expected to hit $1 million in revenue by the end of 2007...