Brian Hall, Finance Practice Leader, Hackett Group

Brian Hall, the finance practice leader at the Hackett Group, a strategic advisory firm and Answerthink company, shared the results of a recent report from the firm about compliance costs. The report is based on the firm's 2007 Finance Book of Numbers, a culmination of a year's worth of research that highlights key takeaways for chief financial officers. Hackett expected compliance costs to start to drop for all companies, now that Sarbanes-Oxley marks five years. "We were expecting that overall burden of the project, as it were, the compliance costs, to come down, and what we're finding at leading companies, it certain did, but for [others], it didn't." Hall spoke with Consulting about the research and life in a post S-O world.

Consulting: You were surprised by the continued expense related to Sarbanes-Oxley. What did you expect to find instead?

Hall: We expected the gap to be somewhere in the 20 percent range, not in the 50 percent range. This is a problem because when we take into account the levers of what should drive an audit fee, one of the things that we still were not able to explain was what Firm A pays for their audit and what Firm B pays for their audit technically should be the same if we isolate for complexity. We're not finding that to be the case, and so what appears to be the case is as much as anything, your ability to negotiate with your auditor or what you paid last year are far better determinants of your audit fee than what we would think of as the drivers of the audit fee.

Hackett's Hall: Life 5 Years After Sarbanes-Oxley

Related Stories

Recommended For You