Portland Chapter reports on fall meetings.

• Position: Chapter News

September Meeting

The Portland Chapter kicked off its 2002-2003 fiscal year with Charles (Carl) Lewis and Margaret (Peggy) Note, attorneys with the law firm Stoel Rives LLP. The speakers discussed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other corporate accountability reforms such as new and pending SEC rules and NYSE and Nasdaq corporate governance reforms.

Carl and Peggy discussed the creation of the accounting oversight board and auditor independence. In response to questions from the floor, much conversation focused on the kind of nonaudit services that a public company's audit firm will be allowed to provide. Among the prohibited services listed in Sarbanes-Oxley are appraisal and valuation assistance, actuarial services, human resource support, outsourcing assistance, and legal and investment advice. The membership was also interested in how to handle such practical issues as what to do about prohibited services already in process at the effective date of the Act.

Financial disclosures, prohibitions on personal loans to directors and executive officers, creation of the new public accounting oversight board, and other corporate responsibility issues were covered as well.

October Meeting

The response to the September discussion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was so successful that the chapter began its October meeting with a workshop on the same topic. The panel discussion, presented by KPMG and Steel Rives LLP, featured John Shepherd of KMPG as moderator, Bob Henarie, SEC Partner and David Evans, Tax Partner of KPMG, and Carl Lewis and John Thomas, Tax Partner and SEC Partner, respectively, of Stoel Rives LLP.

It was generally agreed that a primary objective of Sarbanes-Oxley is to shore up credibility of the accounting profession by eliminating opportunities for firms to check their own work. Consequently, "prohibited transactions" with auditors tend to be those that might interfere with the auditor's independence. The panel discussed application of the new rules, as well as the reaction of foreign countries to the new requirements. Also discussed was applicability of the Act to U.S. subsidiaries of publicly traded foreign parents.

The featured dinner speaker for the evening was Mark Garay of Deloitte & Touche's National Tax Group in Washington, D.C. Mr. Garay updated the chapter on recent and pending tax legislation. According to Mr. Garay, we are seeing the best of times and the worst of times in Congress. The best of times is embodied in a...