Enron

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was placed into effect July 2002; the act introduced major changes to the regulation of corporate governance and financial practice. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, who were the main architects that set a number of non-negotiable deadlines for compliance. The organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was one of the first non- government organizations to spell out the principles that should govern the corporate and issued the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. The Sarbanes Oxley Act also known as Public Company Accounting Reform and Information Protection Act and

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a federal law that was enacted in 2002. Enron and other similar corporate scandals led to the passing of this act. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is also known

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a preventative measure passed by congress which protects investors from corporate fraud. Company loans were banned to executives and provided job protection to whistleblowers. Financial-literacy of corporate boards and independence are strengthen by the act. Errors in accounting audits are now the responsibly of the CEO’s. Sponsors to the act were Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Congressman Michael Oxley (R-OH) who the Act is named after.

This now bankrupt company, misappropriated investments, pension funds, stock options and saving plans after deregulation and little oversight by the federal government. However, with deregulation an increasing competitive culture emerged as the CEO Jeffry Skilling motto to his organization was to “do it right, do it now, and do it better” this was the rally cried that pushed ambitious employees to engage in unethical behavior as Enron use deceptive “accounting methods to maintain its investment grade status” (Sims, & Brinkmann, 2003, pp.244-245). As Enron continued to flourish and received accolades from the business community this recognition drove executives to continue the façade of bending ethical guidelines before their public fall from

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act arose as a result of several corporate accounting scandals that became public in late 2001 and early 2002. These scandals involved many publicly traded companies such as Enron, which “boosted profits and hid debts totaling over $1 billion by improperly using off-the-books partnerships”; WorldCom, which “overstated its cash flow by booking $3.8 billion in operating expenses as capital expenses and gave founder Bernard Ebbers $400 million in off-the-books loans”; and Xerox, which “falsified financial results for five years, boosting income by $1.5 billion”, among a long list of others (Patsuris, 2002). In the book Revolutionary Wealth, Alvin and Heidi Toffler (2006) explain that “slowly changing regulatory and

At the turn of the turn of the twenty-first century, a tide of corruption scandals involving reporting and accounting fraud with major US publicly-traded corporations generated a crisis of confidence in US financial markets. Major, apparently prosperous, companies like WorldCom, Sunbeam, Adelphia, and the infamous Enron engaged in accounting fraud of massive proportions to cover financial losses. These actions caused enormous outrage with the US electorate and infused the mistrust of market investors, situation that threatened to disrupt the process by which companies raise capital. Green (2004) concludes that it was adamant to restore public confidence in the capital markets by the end of 2002.

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was security law that was birthed from corporate and accounting scandals. The act’s name was drafted from Senator Paul Sarbanes and Congressman Michael G. Oxley. Oxley is a congressman who introduced his Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act to the House of Representatives. Sarbanes was a senator who proposed his Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection act to the senate in 2002. After the public kept on demanding for a reform, both of the proposed acts passed and President George W. Bush

What is The Sarbanes-Oxley Act? “With more than half of all American households invested in U.S. public companies, the discoveries of financial reporting and auditing improprieties at Enron and numerous other public companies beginning five years ago swelled in 2002 to a national crisis in confidence in the integrity and reliability of public companies’ financial statements and of external audits.” This act of 2002 is a legislation passed by the U.S. Congress to guard shareholders and the general public against accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise, as well as improve the accuracy of corporate disclosures. SOX defines individual accountability and requires employees to construct an investigation of a business or person before signing a

The time frame is early 2002, and the news breaks worldwide. The collapse of corporate giants in America amidst fraud and stock manipulations surfaces. Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth and later Adelphia are all suspected of the highest level of fraud, accounting manipulation, and unethical behavior. This is a dark time in history of Corporate America. The FBI and the CIA are doing investigations on all of these companies as it relates to unethical account practices, and fraud emerges. Investigations found that Enron, arguably the most well-known, had long shredding sessions of important documents and gross manipulation of stocks and bonds. This company alone caused one of the biggest economic

Even the small profits reported by Enron in 2000 were eventually determined to be only a illusion by court-appointed bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson. Batson’s report reveals that over 95% of the reported profits in these two years were attributed to Enron’s misuse of MTM and other accounting techniques. But while financial analysts could not be expected to know that the company illegally manipulated the earnings, the reported profit margins in 2000 were so low and were declining so steadily that they should have merited ample skepticism from analysts about the company’s profits.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. An act passed by U.S. Congress in 2002 to protect investors and the general public from the possibility of accounting errors and fraudulent practices by corporations. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), named after U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley, which contains eleven sections, mandated strict reforms to improve financial disclosures and prevent accounting fraud. The eleven sections of the bill cover responsibilities of a public corporation’s board of directors, adds criminal penalties for certain misconduct, and also requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to create regulations to define how public corporations are to comply with the law. SOX other main purpose is also

The case of Enron Corporation and Andersen, LLP can be noted as one of the most infamous fraud scandals in US history. Investors lost millions of dollars and ruined the public’s trust. Enron was once the seventh largest public company in the United States and Andersen LLP was the world’s largest and most respected business organizations. Enron’s stock prices soared to approximately $100 to less than $10 in 2001. How did these two big giants fall into oblivion and what could have been done to avoid the disaster of these companies?

The story of Enron begins in 1985, with the merger of two pipeline companies, orchestrated by a man named Kenneth L. Lay (1). In its 15 years of existence, Enron expanded its operations to provide products and services in the areas of electricity, natural gas as well as communications (9). Through its diversification, Enron would become known as a corporate America darling (9) and Fortune Magazine’s most innovative company for 5 years in a row (10). They reported extraordinary profits in a short amount of time. For example, in 1998 Enron shares were valued at a little over $20, while in mid-2000, those same shares were valued at just over $90 (10), the all-time high during the company’s existence (9).