As reported in this morning’s Wall St. Journal, the SEC has adopted an order requiring the CEO and CFO of companies with annual revenues in excess of $1.2 billion to provide sworn filings beginning August 14, 2002.
It’s amazing that it comes to this — why haven’t CEO’s and CFO’s been fully accountable for their company’s financial filings all along? The key issue is what definition of accountability — on behalf of the company or personally. The SEC is making it clear with this order that, for this group of companies at least, the accountability is both.