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Essentially, IRIS did a survey on the financials of 1500 Indian public companies. Discrepancies appeared in over 200 of them; figure differences as opposed to accounting interpretations.
One of the outcomes of the survey was to highlight the effect that XBRL will have in bringing such problems to light, and ultimately, to bring them in line.
In more XBRL-as-Superman news, UBMatrix has a paper on how XBRL will help track TARP spending.
A bill of rights for more transparency and governance has been presented to the US Senate. With many echoes of the South African King Code on Corporate Governance it attempts to formalise risk, proxy and remuneration issues.
May 19, 2009
Shareholder Bill of Rights Act Introduced
The highly anticipated Shareholder Bill of Rights Act of 2009 has reportedly been introduced in the Senate today and press releases opposing and supporting the legislation are already flying.
As Compliance Week has reported, the bill, sponsored by New York Democrat Charles Schumer, would, if passed, require companies to:
- Provide an annual non-binding shareholder vote on executive compensation;
- Provide shareholders a vote to approve golden parachutes;
- Give shareholder access to the proxy for board nominations;
- Split the chairman and chief executive roles;
- Hold annual director elections;
- Implement majority voting for directors and
- Establish risk committees comprised of independent directors
The Council of Institutional Investors issued a statement applauding the Act, which it says would “go a long way toward making boards of directors and managers of public companies more accountable to shareowners.”
Meanwhile, the Business Roundtable issued its own statement, in which its President, John Castellani, calls the bill “an unnecessary intrusion” into matters governed by state corporation law and matters currently being addressed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, stock exchanges, and public company boards.
The text of the bill is available here, courtesy of Davis Wright Tremaine’s Corporate Finance Law Blog.
A few minutes ago the announcement was made that Pravin Gordhan, current Commissioner for SARS, has been handed the position of Finance Minister. Current minister, Trevor Manuel, moves on to run a new economic planning commission.
Pravin Gordhan
Gordhan has spoken at XBRL events in South Africa, and believes the standard will be an accepted mode of business reporting. He has approved XBRL activity at SARS, and may lead with accepting corporate tax returns.
Extensible Business Reporting has undoubtably got the kinetic energy to become a political football. XBRL seems to have been nurtured by outgoing US SEC chairman Cox, but owing to the fiascos that happened on his watch, it made sense that new chairman Shapiro would distance herself from it, saying it was not a priority.
What this will mean for XBRL adoption in South Africa is going to be a question as big in these parts as the endless waiting for last year’s SEC mandate.
