Two-and-a-half years after Congress passed the most sweeping corporate reforms since the Great Depression, trade groups are maneuvering to revise them, arguing that they are too expensive, too time-consuming and too much trouble for small businesses.
In recent weeks industry coalitions including the trade group AeA, formerly known as the American Electronics Association, and the American Bankers Association have asked their members to gather complaints about costly provisions that require them to tune-up their financial systems to help uncover fraud and mistakes. The effort is part of a broader campaign planned for this year to modify the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed after financial blowups at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. cost investors billions of dollars and exposed serious lapses in the way companies are governed.
 
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Mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments persuaded Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) to insert language into a conference report in November on a fast-moving spending bill, directing the Securities and Exchange Commission to justify a new rule that forces fund companies to appoint directors without ties to management. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has hauled the SEC into court over the rule.
Separately, opponents of a plan released last month that requires companies to treat stock options as an expense, a move that could sharply cut reported profits at technology companies, vowed to blanket Congress and the SEC early this year to prevent the plan from taking effect, as planned, in June. They will point to a series of letters from 53 senators from both parties to help support their position.
"I am worried about push-back and the search for an opportunity to roll back parts of Sarbanes-Oxley," SEC Commissioner Roel C. Campos said in an interview. "I think those efforts are misguided."
For their part, leaders of the push to revisit these issues say some of the measures went too far and have consequences that their supporters never anticipated.
"This is not a corporate-America-pushing-back issue. There are problems here," said David Hirschmann, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Congress passed the law named after Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Republican Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio) in 2002. It required chief executives to attest to the accuracy of corporate financial statements and required companies to certify that controls were in place to prevent fraud.
Lobbyists and consumer advocates both say that persuading lawmakers to reopen broader debate on the complex legislation will be a difficult task. For one thing, fresh disclosures continue to surface about fraudulent practices on Wall Street and in the insurance sector. So, in the words of a technology industry advocate, business interests are focusing with laser-like intensity on the negative effect the law has had on small businesses, which say they lack resources to pay multimillion dollar audit fees.
Hirschmann said his group is polling its members and plans to present Congress and the SEC with a list of several "technical corrections" to the law. The technical corrections would be akin to changes made in complex tax legislation after it is passed, he explained.
