Some thoughts on these thorny issue, from Fred Tung at The Conglomerate:

From its inception, the (non) application of SOX to foreign issuers has been controversial. Now the whistleblower protections of SOX have come into focus as another avenue for crossborder tensions. The ABA Journal has a nice summary of current issues...Europe, it turns out, is much less enamored of whistleblowers than we are in the States...Europeans are apparently more concerned about the privacy and reputation of the accused. "[W]hile the Americans are most concerned with protecting whistle-blowers to ensure market integrity, Europeans place a higher premium on guarding personal reputations of targets of complaints, which sometimes arise out of spite, revenge or other suspect motives."

More on the ABA article here.

-- MDT