The SEC Stirs The Stew

Things are starting to get interesting at the SEC after a bit of a lull. It seems like there hasn’t been much going on except for lots of hand-wringing over the reputedly high costs of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for small companies.

That may be changing. Not the hand-wringing over the reputedly high costs of Sarbanes-Oxley, just the fact that not much else seems to be going on.

First of all, there was the filing of charges against Apple’s (AAPL) former general counsel and chief financial officer for their roles in the Apple option backdating case. The pair had alleged to have known their actions would under-report Apple’s compensation expense by $40 million. Former General Counsel Nancy Heinen hasn’t responded to the charges yet; former CFO Fred Anderson simultaneously settled with the Commission for $3.5 million without admitting or denying the charges. You could argue that still, nothing much is happening at the SEC: Anderson will be permitted to participate in the management of public companies, and in fact continues to serve as the audit committee chairman of the board of directors at Ebay.. A rather paradoxical position, for someone who stood to gain from allowing misreporting to occur.

Then there’s this article, courtesy of Reuters,, in which Chairman Cox declares that there will be a conclusion to the backdating saga “within weeks.” Hopefully, the conclusion will be more vigorous than what we’ve seen so far.

And lastly, there’s the sudden activity in international accounting standards going on at the SEC. First, there was the announcement on April 24 that the SEC will float a concept release this summer giving registrants a choice between US and international accounting standards in their filings with the Commission. Then the next day, just to amp up the action a bit further, the SEC signed a protocol for a “Work Plan” between the Commission and the Committee of European Securities Regulators [CESR] to share information on application of International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS] by issuers listed in the UK and the U.S.

That last one could have a lot more effect on the work of investors than the SEC’s handling of the backdating issue; it’s the one to watch over the coming months.