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The UK Government is considering whether to introduce something along the lines of SOX. Regardless of where we end up following the current consultation process, it will almost certainly not be the end of the debate on internal control.
More than twenty years have passed since the corporate collapse of Enron. The response of the then US Government led to the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002 (SOX). One of the key features of this was to require Chief Executives and Chief Financial Officers of US public companies to provide attestations on the effectiveness of a company’s internal controls over financial reporting. Additionally, a company’s external auditor was required to provide an opinion on that attestation – thus, resulting in the birth of what has been termed “the integrated audit”, which of course has evolved over time.