An influential advisory committee appointed by the Securities and Exchange Commission is about to formally propose that thousands of smaller companies be exempted from significant parts of the four-year-old law that imposed significant new auditing rules on corporate America.
Emboldened by what they hope is a changing climate in Washington, businesses have embarked on a multifront assault on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was adopted in 2002 after the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other companies. They have sued the government to have the law stricken, challenged various provisions and lobbied lawmakers and the commission to water down others.
