The largest business group in the US launched a harsh attack on New York attorney-general Mr Eliot Spitzer yesterday, the opening salvo in a campaign to curb what many companies say is very aggressive enforcement of corporate governance and accounting rules.

Mr Thomas Donohue, chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce, said in Washington that Mr Spitzer's tactics in cracking down on the insurance and mutual fund industries were "the most egregious and unacceptable form of intimidation that we have seen in this country in modern times. And it's going on in the application of a well-intended piece of legislation."

In particular, he said, Mr Spitzer's decision last October to force out the chief executive of Marsh & McLennan, the global insurer charged with bid-rigging, "is not the system that has been put in place in this country and that has protected our individual and institutional liberties".

Mr Spitzer has become a prominent target for businesses concerned over the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which was passed by Congress following the accounting scandals that have engulfed Enron, WorldCom and several other companies in the last few years.

Mr Donohue charged that rather than protecting shareholders and consumers, Mr Spitzer and some other prosecutors "seem bent on criminalising honest mistakes and legitimate accounting differences".

In laying out its lobbying agenda for this year, the chamber, which represents about 3 million businesses, most of them small companies, said it would seek only minor technical adjustments to the legislation itself.

But Mr Donohue charged that the Securities & Exchange Commission and the Justice Department had gone far beyond the intent of the law and were foisting a series of costly regulatory and enforcement actions on US companies. - (Financial Times Service)