Case Study: Telecommunications Company

DGS has served as special counsel to the audit committee of a publicly held telecommunications company whose stock is traded on NASDAQ.  Our services have included advice concerning the required revisions to its committee charter necessitated by the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the newly enhanced corporate governance rules of NASDAQ passed in response to the Act.  We have advised the committee as to its new functions as the recipient of employee "whistleblower" complaints as well as its corresponding role as the Qualified Legal Compliance Committee for notification of potential violations of securities laws or breaches of fiduciary duty by attorneys representing the company.  We have also advised the committee concerning the implementation of other new responsibilities created by Sarbanes-Oxley and the NASDAQ corporate governance rules, including the evaluation of management's assessment of internal controls, the independent auditors' report on that assessment and the independence of the company's auditors under the new, stricter, independence standards.