BT chairman slams cost of Sarbox

BT chairman slams cost of Sarbox

The 'great burden' of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance will cost BT £10m, according to chairman Sir Christopher Bland.

Link: Sarbox to cost UK corporates £120m

‘That’s a lot of money and it’s not well spent – I think they’ve just gone too far,’ said Sir Christopher.

Accountancy Age revealed last week that it would cost UK companies a total of £122m to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

But Sir Christopher said there was no chance of BT delisting from the US stock market. ‘We have American shareholders and US dollar-denominated bonds as well. So we’ve just got to grit our teeth and get on with it.’

Sir Christopher also said that he preferred the splitting of chairman and chief executive roles, which has formed part of the recent UK reforms of corporate governance.

‘In an organisation where the chairman and CEO are separate, it requires a degree of collusion between the two for absolutely egregious bad behaviour to take place, and that’s pretty hard to organise,’ he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

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