WASHINGTON – U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson today convened a summit to promote ways of helping U.S. capital markets regain their former dominance.
The summit – whose participants include former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin – is seeking ways to curb U.S. regulations and litigation costs that he and other critics say are driving companies overseas.
Regulators must question whether they “have struck the right balance between investor protection and market competitiveness,” Paulson said in his opening remarks, according to Bloomberg News. Officials should adopt “a particular eye toward more rigorous cost-benefit analysis of new regulation,” he said.
Not everyone agrees that laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance act, which instituted strict auditing requirements, have created an unfair burden. Harvey Goldschmid, a former commissioner on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said: “Sarbanes-Oxley has been enormously effective in improving corporate governance by encouraging activity, questioning and a more serious attitude by directors.”
