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At its public meeting in Washington this morning, the PCAOB proposed its first substantive standard — the auditing and related professional practice standard for the attestation to Management’s Assessment of Internal Control over Financial Reporting. Section 404 of SOX, along with Section 103, directed the PCAOB to establish these professional standards.

The PCAOB’s chief auditor, Douglas Carmichael, explained that under the proposed standard, the auditor must evaluate both management’s assessment and conclusion and the internal controls themselves in order to provide its report with the required level of assurance. As part of that, audit committees should expect to have their own performances scrutinized and evaluated. An ineffective audit committee could itself be a failure of internal controls. The PCAOB expects to receive extensive comments on this last element of its proposal.

To satisfy the PCAOB, the audit of internal controls must be integrated with the audit of the financial statements. Note that while the PCAOB isn’t yet proposing to change the auditor independence rules generally, the PCAOB’s proposed standards would evidently prohibit the auditor from accepting an internal control engagement (for non-audit services) that has not been specifically (as opposed to categorically) pre-approved by the audit committee.

The PCAOB also adopted rules relating to its inspections of registered public accounting firms and proposed a rule defining some terms used in its professional practice standards.

More Details About Tomorrow’s SEC Open Meeting Leaked

Not to be outdone by the PCAOB, the SEC is set to have an open meeting tomorrow (at 9:30 a.m.) to take up its own significant and undoubtedly contentious topic – whether to propose rules that would require companies, under certain circumstances, to include security holder nominees for director in the company’s proxy materials.

Unlike the typical secrecy surrounding most proposals, the details of tomorrow’s proposal have been gradually leaked. The Washington Post reports today that the proposed framework will be triggered if either:

– a group representing at least 1 percent of a company’s investors puts a proposal on the proxy ballot requesting that a shareholder nominee or nominees be added to the ballot the following year. The proposal would need the approval of more than 50 percent of shareholders to win; or

– 35 percent of shareholders withhold their votes for a director or slate of directors, triggering a provision giving investors the right to try to get nominees on the next year’s ballot.

Once triggered, investors would have to win backing from 5% of shareholders to submit nominations. Shareholders would be allowed to propose one name for smaller boards and as many as three for larger ones. Nominees would have to get more than 50% of the vote to win.

Inside Scoop on Serving as a Director

For TheCorporateCounsel.net subscribers, we have posted a very interesting interview with Jim Ukropina on Serving as a Director. Jim, who sits on several Fortune 500 boards, provides his unique insights into a variety of topics, including the upcoming shareholder access proposal.