Is it too early to say what impact Sarbanes-Oxley is actually having
on quarterly earnings reports? Not according to the famous money manager Jim
Cramer [trivia fact: he’s a Harvard Law grad].
He believes the compliance landscape has drastically changed—and
that the witches’ brew of analysts’ puffery, Internet chat-room rogues,
all-CNBC-all-the-time, and vulpine CEO’s and CFO’s is not returning any
time soon. Why?
- the DOJ takedown of Arthur Andersen (too radical even for Eliot Spitzer’s
blood); - SOX itself, which beyond anything else awakens CEO’s and CFO’s to
the prospect of personally going to jail should their sub-alterns
get too aggressive; and finally - that white-collar jail-time is now as serious, if not more so, than
that meted out garden-variety felons.
He may be right, he may be wrong, but he’s putting his money where his
mouth is.
