Mark W. Olson, the head of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the independent organization that oversees the accounting industry, is leaving a year before his term is set to expire.
Olson has been chairman of the PCAOB since July 2006. Olson, whose resignation takes effect July 31, says the decision "is entirely personal and reflects my desire at this time of life to establish new priorities."
A former Federal Reserve governor, he was appointed to head the five-member oversight board by Christopher Cox, then-chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The PCAOB was created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which attempted to clean up financial reporting in the wake of massive accounting scandals at Enron Corp, WorldCom and other companies.
The Supreme Court said last month that it would hear a constitutional challenge to the 2002 law. The Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution requires that "officers of the United States" be appointed by the president or by the head of a department. Yet under Sarbanes-Oxley, the SEC commissioners as a group pick PCAOB members. The president can neither appoint nor remove the officials, an arrangement that the plaintiff says violates the separation of powers. - Donna Block
See announcement from PCAOB
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