Re: Back and a Question

It may not stop it, but its a start. Executives AND the accounting firm executives are reqired to sign a document that states they are certifying the books. They are taking personal responsibility for the books being accurate and it has their name on it.

The problem in the past was the accounting firms worked for the company they were auditing so they have a vested interested in not ratting them out. Now that their executive have to sign the document and take personal and legal responsibility.

I know of one company where all executives where a different color badge. It indicates that they can be sued.

• Original message -------------- From: "Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com>

SOX won't stop the next one. In the end if you have a corrupt CEO/CFO or entire board then they will be able to get away with it for a significant length of time subject to two conditions

1. The economic times have to be generally good
2. There has to be a ready supply of cash - from customers/pensions/banks whomever

auditing and regulation don't eliminate the risk of fraud, and are most effective against fraud by employees rather than executives. To be honest my money would be on someone like Amazon or Google where there is little apparent profit generation capacity, huge PR and capitalisation and a general view that the companies are God's gift to their industry. Obviously it might not be them, but mark my words it will be someone like them and it will likely come out when the downturn occurs.

Niall

with economist not dba hat on, obviously.  

On 8/17/06, ryan_gaffuri_at_comcast.net <ryan_gaffuri_at_comcast.net > wrote: Even though SOX may be flawed, something was necessary. There was a $7 billion accounting fraud case against Worldcom. It cost people their life savings. They basically bullied some mid-level account into changing the books.

Then there is the enron case where they took over companies and moved their losses to those companies to hide the losses.

There was another case(i forgot which company) where the CEO treated company money like it was a kingdom that he reigned over and stole money from the company.

People put their retirments and pension plans into the stock market. Something was needed to help restore trust. The problem with the market is that the owners of the company do not run the company. So the interest of those who run the company may differ from those who own it.

done with my off topic rant.

• Original message -------------- From: Nuno Souto <dbvision_at_iinet.net.au >

> I'm sorry: did anyone expect ANYTHING else?
>
>

> Cheers
> Nuno Souto
> in sunny Sydney, Australia
> dbvision_at_iinet.net.au
>
>

> David Aldridge wrote,on my timestamp of 17/08/2006 2:09 AM:
> > I expect that this relates back to the previously raised issue of SOX
> > being a license to print money for the Big 4/5. It seems to have spawned
> > quite an industry of its own.
> >

> > ryan_gaffuri_at_comcast.net wrote:
> >
> >> if it doesn't state in SOX that developers can't have access to
> >> production data, how do the auditors determine what is a violation?
> >
> >

> --
> http://www.freelists.org/web page/o racle-l
>
>

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info 
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