These include greater financial oversight and a requirement that stock options be treated as corporate expenses.

At the same time, corporate expenses fell 18.3 percent, to $277 million, she added, which was better than forecast.

Such options, which vest without any requirement that performance goals are met, should be treated as a corporate expense, the commission said.

Overall corporate expenses for the quarter rose to $15.5 million, compared with $12.3 million in 2003.

A decline in corporate expenses also helped offset the cable unit's performance.

At its foundation is one fact: not all corporate expenses are the same, and for good reason.

Management kept corporate expenses to a 3.4 percent increase last year.

A further $8 million of similar restructuring was included in corporate expenses.

Despite a cost-cutting effort, corporate expenses rose 12.9 percent, to $35 million from $31 million.

In such complaints, he said, investigators often find that companies were using workers' pension money to pay corporate expenses, as Halliburton did.