Sarbanes-Oxley: not fading away.

• Position: Regulation - Brief Article

Hoping that the hoopla over Sarbanes-Oxley will start to fade? Don't get your hopes up, say some people advising companies on compliance issues.

While the deadline on the high-profile Section 404 attestation requirements is coming up next June for larger public companies, there's a lot of sentiment that Sarbanes-Oxley will remain a hot topic through 2004 and beyond. Smaller companies will be a focus after April 2005, says Ken Stephens, a principal with the accounting firm Rothstein, Kass & Co. in Roseland, N.J., who thinks the law will remain a headline-maker into 2006.

Stephens says that much of the current focus is on the biggest corporations. "For the middle-market companies, I think there will be a wait-and-see approach, as they watch what the bigger companies, the accelerated filers, are doing."

But Stephens, whose firm works chiefly with mid-sized and smaller companies, believes that many of those will be repulsed...