? Forty per cent of listed companies in the UK have not considered the impact of IAS regulations on their business, and over half of corporates affected by Sarbanes-Oxley have not even started their Section 404 compliance.
These conclusions from a survey by Resources Connection, a professional services firm, will raise more than a few eyebrows in the corporate world.
Fresh IAS regulations, to be enacted on January 1 2005, will affect the transparency of every corporate balance sheet, and while the deadline is over 13 months away, CFOs must prepare comparative figures for 2004.
As for Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, CFOs are signing their names on accounts every day.
But many corporates, according to the survey, are ignoring the advice about Sarbanes-Oxley compliance to their detriment. “Companies cannot continue to stick their heads in the sand. Ignoring what needs to be done won’t make the regulations go away,“ explains Ruth Hughes, a client services director at Resources Connection.
Section 404 of the Act, dealing with documentation for an organisation’s processes and systems, is causing the most difficulties; 30% of respondents said this was the most difficult aspect.