Sarbanes-Oxley Law Spurs New CUPractice

RALEIGH, N.C. - (04/29/05) -- The board of State Employees CU hasapproved new corporate governance rules based on the Sarbanes-OxleyAct for publicly traded companies that will entail greater memberdisclosures on executive compensation and creation of an internal'whistleblower hotline' to gather and investigate allegations ofinternal wrongdoing. The new Corporate Governance Policy wasspurred by the recently passed corporate governance law, known asSOX, and is aimed at formalizing policies to bring greaterdisclosure and transparency to the credit union giant's operations,according to Randy Partin, head of internal audit for the $13billion credit union. "We needed to do a few things to formalizewhat we've always done," he told The Credit Union Journal. Amongthe new practices will be to disclose in the annual report thecompensation for the credit union's top executives, includingPresident Jim Blaine ($458,000 in 2004). It will also requireemployees to report suspicions of wrongdoing by employees andmanagement override of controls to a whistleblower hotline. Thosereports will be forwarded to the audit committee of the creditunion's board.