Zack Odem
Accounting major from Neosho
While our class was in Vienna, Austria, we visited York Heating and Air Conditioning. The controller and general director of the Vienna York office described to us the difficulties that their office has encountered due to the sweeping requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. These regulations have imposed U.S. business practices on a culture that has historically done business very differently than in the U.S. A specific example of the Sarbox imposition on this foreign subsidiary is that York in Vienna now has to get signed invoices from its customers for job orders, rather than just doing business over a handshake. This new requirement has been very difficult to implement because customers do not understand why York is changing the way it does business with them. Many of the York customers’ initial reaction was that York did not trust their word, which caused great difficulties for York.
