Eric Schwartzman | New Media and Social Media Communications

“No journalists like using anonymous sources,” says Gregory Solman, West Coast Editor of Adweek. But since so many of the big advertising agencies are publicly owned, they’ve become less willing to talk to us because of Sarbanes Oxley.

Bottom Line: S.O. cuts both ways, as most investor relations firms will tell you.

On one hand, S.O. puts individual investors and institutional investors on a fair playing field, by making sure neither will have an trading advantage by requiring public companies to disclose news nonselectively.

On the other hand, as a direct result of S.O., executives are less willing to talk, which means investors are less likely to get much more than quarterly corporate earnings press releases.