SOX costs UK car maker 10m [pounds sterling].

The CFO of Jaguar and Land Rover has given a telling insight into the price paid by UK subsidiaries of US companies to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 (SOX). At a recent CIMA event in the West Midlands, David Smith told an audience of business leaders that his firm's work to comply with the law governing its US parent, Ford, had cost it "in the region of 10 million [pounds sterling]". He revealed that most of the 300-strong finance team had been involved. "It has been a huge expenditure and a huge effort," said Smith, who added that the implementation had rung a warning bell. "It forced us to rethink how good we are at governing ourselves," he said. "Quite honestly, we weren't as good as we thought we were." Smith went on to tell the audience, at a special event to highlight CIMA's enterprise governance initiative, that the project had taught him how much work was required to ensure good governance. "The difference in the amount of time I spend on this now compared with two years ago is enormous," he said. "It has taught me about getting back to basics and it is changing how I think about my job."