Will Vouching For The Numbers Make A Difference?
from the unlikely dept
The Economist has an article about the new requirement for public US companies to have their senior executives vouch for their financial numbers. While there have been a bunch of articles about this new rule, and various announcements when big name companies agreed to it, there is still the big question of whether or not it makes any difference? In the long run, it seems that having the exec vouch for the numbers will be a sort of rubber stamp, like many auditing signatures were before. While the threat of jailtime is there, I doubt many execs believe that they would ever go to jail. The possibility seems so remote that it isn’t a real hurdle. Mostly, this seems like a cosmetic rule to make the government look like it’s doing something in the wake of all these accounting scandals.
