SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, in a speech, alluded to revisions the agency has been planning to make in response to business complaints that a key requirement of a 2002 anti-fraud law enacted after the wave of corporate scandals was overly burdensome and expensive. Copies of his speech in London at a conference of an international securities regulators' group were distributed by the SEC in Washington.

Cox and the other four SEC commissioners are expected to tentatively adopt the changes at a public meeting on Dec. 13. Some observers, including Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant, have warned against a major easing by the SEC of the rules - saying that would erode the investor protections in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Cox said the U.S. regulators "will unveil significant changes" to the implementation of the key part of the law, the requirement for companies to file reports on the strength of their internal financial controls and to fix any problems. "Those changes will be aimed at ensuring that the internal-control audit is top-down, risk-based and focused on what truly matters to the integrity of a company's financial statements," he said.

"They will provide guidance for both companies and their auditors to permit common-sense reliance on past work and on the work of others."

Cox urged, in a recent letter to the independent board that oversees the U.S. accounting industry, that it revise its auditing rules under the internal-controls requirement to adapt them to the size of the company whose books are being audited. Cox and Mark W. Olson, chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, met Sunday to discuss differing approaches of the two agencies toward the requirement.

An advisory committee appointed by the SEC formally proposed in April that the agency exempt smaller companies from the internal-controls requirement - a move that would affect about 70 percent of all public companies in the United States.

The SEC rejected that idea but said it will take a series of actions meant to improve the way the law works, including providing guidance to companies of all sizes on complying with it. That would allow companies to take a broad approach to the requirement, focusing on the parts of their business that present the biggest potential financial risk.

"The overarching objective of these significant changes will be to reduce the cost to investors while increasing the benefits in terms of investor protection," Cox said in his speech.

With the string of scandals that began with Enron Corp.'s collapse nearly five years ago fading further from memory, business interests have been pushing for a softening of the laws and rules enacted in response to the crisis. Two groups - one formed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the other an independent committee of business, legal and academic figures - are drafting proposals touching on corporate governance rules, class-action lawsuits against companies and executives, criminal prosecution of companies by the government and other areas.

In the last few years, business interests - especially smaller public companies - have been complaining vocally and publicly about the costs of complying with the internal-controls requirement under Sarbanes-Oxley. The Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has been waging a legal assault against what it views as excessive regulation since 2002, suing the SEC over rules and scoring several victories in high courts.