1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
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The Sarbanes-Oxley Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 was triggered by several high-profile incidents of corporate malfeasance. The legislation introduced major changes to corporate governance, financial practices in the public sector, and the relationship between companies and their accountants.
Supporters of Sarbanes-Oxley claim it has done what
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it was meant to do: it has improved investor confidence in the financial sector and increased personal responsibility for the most senior corporate officers. Critics, however, claim that Sarbanes-Oxley has created major costs for public companies, turned accountants from advisers into adversaries, encouraged both American and foreign companies to leave U.S. capital markets, and contributed to our more recent financial crisis.
At this event, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and AEI senior fellow Newt Gingrich will discuss the role Sarbanes-Oxley played in our more recent financial crisis. Hans Bader, senior attorney and counsel for special projects at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Harvey L. Pitt, chief executive officer of the global business consulting firm Kalorama Partners, LLC, will shed light on the challenges firms are faced with due to Sarbanes-Oxley. AEI resident fellow Alex J. Pollock will also comment. Kenneth Green, acting director of the AEI Reg-Markets Center, will moderate.
| 9:15 a.m. |
Registration | |
| 9:30 | Presenter: | Newt Gingrich, AEI |
| Commenter: | Hans Bader, Competitive Enterprise Institute | |
| Harvey L. Pitt, Kalorama Partners, LLC | ||
| Alex J. Pollock, AEI | ||
| Moderator: | Kenneth P. Green, AEI | |
| 11:30 | Adjournment |
American Enterprise Institute
Hans Bader is a senior attorney and counsel for special projects at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Prior to joining CEI in 2003, Mr. Bader's prior casework has included suits involving the First Amendment, federalism, and civil rights issues. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in economics and history, and later earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Prior to joining CEI, Hans was Senior Counsel at the Center for Individual Rights.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is a senior fellow at AEI and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Mr. Gingrich is a member of the Terrorism Task Force for the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Commission on National Security, an advisory board member of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. He is also a contributor to Fox News Channel and the Church Report, and writes a weekly newsletter for Human Events. He is the author of nineteen books, including the New York Times bestseller Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works (Regnery, 2008). His next book, To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom (Thomas Dunne Books, 2009) will be released this October. Mr. Gingrich is the chairman of the Gingrich Group, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, and general chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future.
Kenneth P. Green studies public policy with respect to air pollution and climate change, energy and the environment, transportation and the environment, and environmental chemicals as a resident scholar at AEI. His work includes analysis of Canadian environmental policy. He has authored numerous policy studies, newspaper and magazine articles, several encyclopedia entries and book chapters, and a textbook for middle-school students entitled Global Warming: Understanding the Debate (Enslow Publishers, 2002). Mr. Green has worked on both U.S. and Canadian policy, first at California's Reason Foundation, then for nearly three years at British Columbia's Fraser Institute.
Harvey L. Pitt is the chief executive officer of the global business consulting firm Kalorama Partners, LLC. Prior to founding Kalorama Partners, Mr. Pitt served as the twenty-sixth chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission from 2001 to 2003. In that role, Mr. Pitt's responsibilities included overseeing the SEC's response to the market disruptions resulting from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, creating the SEC's "real time enforcement" program, and leading the SEC's adoption of dozens of rules in response to the corporate and accounting crises generated by the excesses of the 1990s.
Alex J. Pollock has been a resident fellow at AEI since 2004, focusing on financial policy issues, including housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, retirement finance, corporate governance, accounting standards, and the banking system. Previously, he spent thirty-five years in banking, including twelve years as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. He is the author of numerous articles on financial systems and the organizer of the "Deflating Bubble" series of AEI conferences. In 2007, he developed a one-page mortgage form to help borrowers understand their mortgage obligations. He is a director of Allied Capital Corporation, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation, the International Housing Union for Housing Finance, and the chairman of the board of the Great Books Foundation.
