Good News Investors - You've Got a Financial Expert on the Board - The Bad News - It Doesn't Mean Anything

In light of the portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires disclosure of whether a reporting company has an audit committee financial expert, the author examines a representative sample of more than 200 publicly-filed proxy statements to determine how those companies have addressed the financial expert requirement. Based on that examination, the article proposes modifications to the SEC's rules on audit committee financial experts as a means to better achieve the Congressional goal of improving the audit committee's oversight of the financial reporting process.