Sarbanes Oxley

Speaker: Roel Dill, Manager, KPMG LLP

Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404
Benchmark Study

Defining Issues®

The accounting scandals in recent years (Enron and MCI were the most well known) triggered actions by congress that resulted in the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. This Act is widely considered the most significant change to federal securities laws in the United States in many decades. The Act directs management of public companies to perform a self-assessment of their internal controls. Independent auditors are required to evaluate management's assessment as well as the internal controls structure itself, all in an effort to improve corporate governance, to protect the investing public, and to restore investor confidence in the financial markets.

Compliance with the Act has been a monumental task for companies and their auditor's alike, costs to comply proved to be a multiple of the first SEC estimates several years ago. Whereas traditionally SEC reporting matters generally affected personnel in the accounting and finance departments, this new legislation has had an impact on many different departments of the companies that had to comply with it.

Today's presentation will focus on controls in the purchasing process that should be implemented from a Sarbanes Oxley compliance perspective, the underlying financial reporting risks mitigated by those controls, and the consequences of non-compliance, to clarify why departments other than accounting and finance have been "dragged into" Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts.

Speaker Biography:

Roel Dill is an audit manager at KPMG LLP. During his career at KPMG, he has served a wide variety of clients such as pharmaceutical companies, venture capitalists, restaurant chains, and manufacturing companies, both public and private.

Roel is responsible for ensuring that audits are performed in compliance with applicable industry and firm standards. He is a national instructor for KPMG, teaching the firm's staff on technical topics as well as KPMG audit methodology. Roel had several clients that were required to comply with Sarbanes Oxley 404 during the past year and continues to be involved on several "Sarbanes Oxley engagements."

Roel attended San Diego State University where he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelors degree in business administration. He was born and raised in the Netherlands and moved to the United States in 1993, living in San Diego since then. Roel enjoys watching sports, and spending time at home with his family.