Thompson & Knight LLP, Kestrel Management Services, and Frank Crystal & Company jointly sponsored a seminar on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 "Environmental Compliance and Financial Disclosure: Managing Internal Controls and Information Flow." The seminar addressed the challenges of managing both environmental regulatory compliance and environmental financial disclosure obligations.
Companies today face the challenge of increasing their return on investment while complying with an ever-changing framework of laws and regulations, including rules governing financial disclosure and environmental, health and safety issues. In many cases, companies now must estimate financial liabilities that, until a few years ago, were not subject to accounting scrutiny. In addition, many companies are not completely familiar with these new reporting and disclosure requirements, and management and director knowledge may be even more limited.
With recent cases ruling that officers and directors are not covered for shareholder claims arising from failure to disclose environmental liabilities, the need for director understanding and involvement in financial disclosure is imperative. In response to these challenges, some companies are spending significant resources developing appropriate internal controls relating to environmental disclosure. Often however, these procedures are developed independent of any operational management system and are lacking a basis for continual performance improvement. Instead, compliance activities become a reactive process driven by auditors. The result is often inefficient non-value added activities and unreliable compliance.
Other companies have failed to adopt any but the most rudimentary processes for addressing environmental disclosure. This program will provide a practical approach to developing a corporate understanding and strategy for sustainable compliance with environmental financial disclosure requirements. Ways of identifying opportunities will be discussed for developing both risk management strategies and extracting business value from these compliance initiatives.
The lineup of speakers was as follows:
Environmental Financial Disclosure after FIN 47 and Sarbanes-Oxley
- Scott Deatherage, Thompson & Knight LLP
Operationalizing Internal Controls – from Project to Process
- Tom Kunes, Kestrel Management Services
Operational Sustainability and Performance Improvement
- Paul Cattermole, Kestrel Management
Services
Officer and Director Roles and Responsibilities: The Need for
Corporate Environmental Disclosure Policy and Strategy
- Scott Deatherage, Thompson & Knight LLP
Risk Management Strategies
- Dan Persha, Frank Crystal & Company
The presentations are available for downloading at If you have any questions regarding these materials, please send me an email and I will contact you.
http://www.tklaw.com/resources/documents/Environmental%20Compliance%20Seminar%202007%20Handout.pdf
