Technical committee profile: Committee on Corporate Reporting.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: FEI News - Financial Executives International

When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) elected earlier this year to delay by five months the effective date of implementing Section 404 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a major voice influencing that decision was FEI's Committee on Corporate Reporting (CCR), which told the agency first-hand about the difficulties companies were having in meeting the deadline.

Impacting policies and regulations governing U.S. and multinational companies has been a hallmark of CCR. The committee, which began in 1966, has become one of the most influential corporate voices affecting accounting and reporting policy, with regular contacts between members and agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and standard-setters like the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

Most committee members are controllers of Fortune 100 or other very large public companies that are household names in corporate America: IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Pfizer Inc., Comcast Corp., General Electric Co., Procter & Gamble Co. and Exxon-Mobil Corp., to name a few. Appointments are subject to annual renewals, but most members serve as long as they remain qualified, actively participate and are interested in serving.

As currently configured, CCR has 45 members and almost as many alternates, many of whom are direct reports to members and support their participation on the committee. The committee meets four times a year, and has three active subcommittees that separately meet four times annually. Those subcommittees are liaisons to the FASB and IASB (International Accounting Standards Board), the SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). Each CCR member must serve on one of the subcommittees.

Constant Airing of Views

The subcommittee meetings afford the members extensive private discussions with the affected regulator or standardsetter, meaning that FEI's views are constantly being factored into accounting and reporting policy. The one exception to the private meetings is a two-hour public meeting with the entire FASB board that takes place at the June meeting each year.

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Chairman Frank H. Brod, vice president and controller of The Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich., concedes that "you've got to really be an aficionado of financial reporting" to get the most out of a CCR meeting. But he adds something commonly heard within FEI--that "topically, and from the impact on members, it's FEI's most influential committee."

Regulators...