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Comment by hatsix | Hacker News Reader

The reports don't have to each be audited... reduce the auditing to twice a year, increase reporting to monthly... if your report requires remediation, you her bumped to quarterly audits

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The company would probably be sued if there were any issues in one of the monthly reports; the money for the plaintiff lawyers is just too appealing. I think monthly 'informal' reports with some legal protections to allow for inaccuracies and inconsistencies, with biennial 'formal' reports would be wonderful. That said, I think allowing companies to select an appropriate reporting interval might be best.

Feels like a first world problem. If your company cannot afford to output accurate reports every month, maybe it shouldn’t be a company at all.

Do you have any sources to back up your feelings? I’m basing my comments on what I’ve read about the matter from a variety of former public company CEOs, CFOs, and COOs.

I am coming to this from a perspective of a worker who used to get quarterly options of the public company I worked for, and I just cannot for the life of me sympathize with a company complaining that it can only afford to gather the information to calculate the worth of the stocks they are paying me in two times a year. I don‘t care how much it costs them. If you are gonna be paying and trading in stocks, I expect you to do the work required.

I understand your view, and agree that transparency is good, but "the work required" is largely preventing and defending against lawsuits by plaintiff lawyers, and those lawsuits cannot possibly benefit the shareholders (because whether the suit is won, lost, or settled, the money all goes from one pocket to another, with a cut going to the lawyers).

This may sound rough, but I don’t care about shareholders. In fact I consider them my enemy, or at least my class-enemy. Whenever they make money off of the shares of the company I work for, I consider that exploitation, and I want them to stop doing that. I also want them to stop paying me in stocks, and I want my—and my fellow worker’s—pension funds to stop trading in stocks. My shareholders are my exploiters and my enemy and my pension fund should not be my exploiter nor my enemy.

But while we live in this system which forces stocks onto me, and I have no say in the matter, I want it as transparent as possible, and I don‘t care how much it costs my enemies.

Ahhh yes. As we all know regulations and requirements and bureaucracy never have unintended consequences, especially on the little guy. All that matters is intent, right?

The "little guy" isn't a publicly listed company issuing reports. By the time you have an IPO, you're no longer little.

Shouldn't be a public company, at least. You can squander your own money as you like.

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