More than 50 foreign companies, including British Airways, BASF, Ducati, ICI, Fiat, and Royal Ahold, have packed up their tickers and made their grand exits from the New York and Nasdaq stock exchanges this year. Bayer is among about 30 others that plan to leave. According to an article in USA TODAY, issues that are driving the trend include financial pressures created by Sarbanes-Oxley, relaxed delisting procedures, and the increased ability for US traders to purchase stock from foreign exchanges.
Comments
Frank Hooper Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
If they do business in the US, then they must still be in compliance with US laws, which include Sarbanes Oxley. De-listing is mostly for show. They still have to file with the SEC, and still must be in compliance with PCAOB accounting prounouncements for their US subsidiarys. British Airways, BASF, Ducati, Fiat, and Royal Ahold are foreign companies - and not very good ones at that. This is corporate america’s ’spin’ to run Sox out of town on a rail. Why would they do this? They don’t want to be held accountable for their own financial statements. They don’t want to become another Jeff Skilling or Ken Lay. They want to be able to ‘work’ the system and their financial statements. Meaningful and honest studies how shown over and over again, that the first few years of SOX compliance is expensive, but many companies have benefited by improving their business processes and documenting existing practices - in effect - actually improving their internal controls. Don’t cry wolf! If you want to de-list, de-list. If you want to cut yourself off from the finest and most powerful capitalistic market in the world, do so. Sounds to me like compliance is too expensive for these companies. If that is the case, they must have had a mess on their hands with their financial statements and their internal controls. I wouldn’t buy stock in any of them.
Daysha Taylor Says:
September 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am
“If that is the case, they must have had a mess on their hands with their financial statements and their internal controls.” –This is surely the case with Royal Ahold. SEC investigations regarding financial irregularities eventually led to the sale of the company’s U.S. Foodservice operations and subsequent departure from the NYSE.
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