The High Cost of Political Posturing
Taxes and spending get most of the attention, but regulations can be just as expensive and far more wasteful. Take the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, passed in the post-Enron panic as a demonstration that Congress and the administration cared and were doing something. Compliance costs a fortune, siphoning funds from productive investments (including hiring); that the law took effect in the middle of a recession didn't help the economic recovery. More significant is the long-term effect. The law threatens to block smaller firms from going public, cutting them off from a major source of capital. That effect will filter backward, making venture capital funding more difficult by eliminating one way VCs get their money out. The Dallas Morning News reports on some of the local effects:
John Davis, chief executive of Pegasus Solutions Inc., figures Sarbanes-Oxley cost his Dallas-based technology services company nearly $1 million, or 2.5 cents a share in unrealized earnings. For a company with just under $200 million in 2004 revenue, that's a lot of dough.
"All of our controls were already in place," Mr. Davis says. "All we did was put them in writing."
Chief executive Jeff Rich says Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services Inc. spent an extra $8.5 million on Sarbanes compliance without changing its operations one iota.
"Sarbox should be called the Accounting Industry Rehabilitation Act," he says. "The only people benefiting from Sox are lawyers and accountants. That's ironic since they were part of the problem to begin with....
Sarbanes is actually bolstering ACS' acquisition pursuits, Mr. Rich says, pointing to its tender offer for Superior Consulting Holdings Corp. in Dearborn, Mich.
"In all candor," says Mr. Rich, "Superior is $100 million in revenue and too small to be a public company today."
Even with twice that much revenue at Pegasus, Mr. Davis says he feels the pressure.
"Quite frankly, we may be too small to be a public company," he says. "You're going to have to look at revenues probably in excess of $500 million a year before going public makes sense."