Past year's successes set up new year's opportunities.

• Author: Schrader, Richard
• Position: FROMtheCHAIRMAN

The start of 2007 marks the mid-point of my tenure as FEI Chairman and affords the opportunity to update you about some key initiatives. As always, there is much to be proud of what we have collectively accomplished. Let me highlight just a few of these accomplishments from 2006.

Last year marked FEI's 75th Anniversary, commemorating the occasion in December 1931, when eight corporate controllers met in New York to lay the foundation of our organization. FEI set out to pay proper tribute to our founding, beginning with a year-long "look-back" series in Financial Executive, entitled FEI@75. Our capstone event came to fruition this past November, as Frank Borelli, F. Gorham Brigham Jr., Dennis Beresford, Robert Moore and Charles Noski were elected to the inaugural class of the FEI Hall of Fame and feted at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center. We will look to build on this first-class event in the future.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Let's take stock of some of the important work done by FEI's technical committees. At any given time, our committees track dozens of issues of significance to financial executives and represent FEI's views before Congress, FASB, PCAOB and others. Here is a quick capsule of some accomplishments to date:

* Rating Agency Reform. Our Committee on Corporate Finance successfully persuaded policymakers to include conflict of interest language in the recently enacted credit rating agency reform legislation (H.R. 2990/S. 3850). The language prohibits agencies from offering certain consulting services to rated clients.

* Corporate Tax. Our Committee on Taxation persuaded Congress to drop the CEO income tax certification proposal from additional consideration. The committee also urged Congressional leaders to complete work on the package of expiring tax provisions during the lame-duck session.

* Government Contracting. The Committee on Government Business joined a coalition supporting legislation (S. 2821) that would repeal the 3 percent withholding tax planned on payments to government contractors. The committee is also working with policymakers and regulation writers to ensure that the final pension reform regulations treat government contractors fairly.

* Financial Reporting. Our Committee on Corporate Reporting filed a comment letter to the SEC on anticipated management guidance for internal control reporting. It suggested that the guidance focus on examples for designing an appropriate top-down, risk-based approach to...