The Sarbanes Oxley Act

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 is a U.S. federal law that has generated much controversy, and involved the response to the financial scandals of some large corporations such as Enron, Tyco International, WorldCom and Peregrine Systems. These scandals brought down the public confidence in auditing and accounting firms. The law is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes Democratic Party and GOP Congressman Michael G. Oxley. It was passed by large majorities in both Congress and the Senate and covers and sets new performance standards for boards of directors and managers of companies and accounting mechanisms of all publicly traded companies in America. It also introduces criminal liability for the board of directors and a requirement by

This memorandum discusses a brief history of Pat, his wrongdoings and related action, and the response by the related law enforcement agencies.

As a result of these public scandals, it was a need in new more strict regulatory standards in terms of protecting investors from fraud activities of corporations.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002Introduction2001-2002 was marked by the Arthur Andersen accounting scandal and the collapse of Enron and WorldCom. Corporate reforms were demanded by the government, the investors and the American public to prevent similar future occurrences. Viewed to be largely a result of failed or poor governance, insufficient disclosure practices, and a lack of satisfactory internal controls, in 2002 George W. Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that became effective on July 30, 2002. Congress was seeking to set standards and guarantee the accuracy of financial reports.

Numerous scandals broke out in the early 2000s, losing the trust of investors in the public

The act contains provisions that formed a new federal agency, reorganized the whole accounting industry, transformed Wall Street practices, dramatically improved corporate governance practices here and aboard, and tackled insider trading and obstruction of justice. With a goal to combat corruption SOX, detail both criminal and civil penalties for noncompliance, certification of internal auditing, and increased financial disclosure. It affects public (and private) U.S. companies and non-U.S. companies with a U.S.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passes in 2002 in response to a handful of large corporate scandals that occurred between the years 2000 to 2002, resulting in the losses of billions of dollars by investors. Enron, Worldcom and Tyco are probably the most well known companies that were involved in these scandals, but there were a number of other companies guilty of such things as well. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as a way to crackdown on corporations by setting new and improved standards that all United States’ public companies and accounting firms were and are required to abide by. It also works to hold top level executives accountable for the company, and if fraudulent behaviors are discovered then the executives could find themselves in hot water. The punishments for such fraudulence could be as serious as 20 years jail time. (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The primary motivation for the act was to prevent future scandals from happening, or at least, make it much more difficult for them to happen. The act was also passed largely to protect the people—the shareholders—from corporations, their executives, and their boards of directors. Critics tend to argue that the act is to complicated, and costs to much to abide by, leading to the United States losing its “competitive edge” in the global marketplace (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The Sarbanes-Oxley act, like most things, has its pros and cons. It is costly; studies have shown that this act has cost companies millions of

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002 as a response to a wave of corporate accounting scandals that damaged public trust in the controls of the US financial system. SOX therefore was created in order to create the framework for better control over accounting information and better accountability among members of senior management. Damianides (2006) notes that much of the burden of providing these tighter controls has fallen to IT departments. The Act not only sets out prescriptions for tighter internal controls, but effectively mandates that senior IT managers will need to communicate those controls to their CFO and CEO, as well as to external auditors.

It affects the businesses by making the corporate officers can interact with the auditors. The act gives more independence to outside auditors as well. With the new act every business should know that every financial statement they produce should be valid and able to be backed up. Businesses can no longer get off the hook for simply not knowing that they were

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, better known as SOX, was passed in response to the scandals that had plagued many companies, from WorldCom to Enron, in the US. SOX was intended to restore investor confidence, decrease fraud and mismanagement while enhancing transparency and corporate governance (Ernst & Young). With the passing of SOX, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) was established to oversee the auditing firms that allowed, whether knowingly or not, these companies to commit fraud and fraud the American people out of their life savings (Harris). With all laws, there will always be some successes and failures. With that you will also have some who feel the law needs to be repealed or be reevaluated to decrease the

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), implemented in 2002, was created to enhance U.S. public company’s auditing (Coates and Srinivasan 628). SOX had two core goals in its implementation, one was to “create a quasi-public institution to oversee and regulate auditing (PCAOB),” and the other was “to enlist auditors more extensively in the enforcement of existing laws against theft and fraud by corporate officers, pursuant to regulations from and enforced by PCAOB” (Coates and Srinivasan 628-629). To accomplish these core goals, “new rules concerning the relationship between public companies and their auditors” were created (Coates and Srinivasan 629). However, to fully understand the changes SOX has made, we must first look at the world before SOX.

The development of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was a result of public company scandals. The Enron and Worldcom scandals, for example, helped investor confidence in entities traded on the public markets weaken during 2001 and 2002. Congress was quick to respond to the political crisis and "enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which was signed into law by President Bush on July 30" (Edward Jones, 1), to restore investor confidence. In reference to SOX, penalties would be issued to non-ethical or non-law-abiding public companies and their executives, directors, auditors, attorneys, and securities analysts (1). SOX significantly transformed the procedures in which public companies handle internal

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in July 30, 2002, by Congress to protect shareholders and the general public from fraudulent corporate practices and accounting errors and to maintain auditor independence.   In protecting the shareholders and the general public the SOX Act is intended to improve the transparency of the financial reporting.   Financial reports are to be certified by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) creating increased responsibility and independence with auditing by independent audit firms. In discussing the SOX Act, we will focus on how this act affects the CEOs; CFOs; outside independent audit firms; the advantages and a

The Act was criticized for being made appropriate to all foreign issuers listed on a U.S. exchange, even though several of the behavior the Act targeted was either a non-issue in foreign countries or was already efficiently regulated. According to Fraser, I. (Oct., 2002) this broad extraterritorial scope is particularly problematic given that the SEC has encouraged foreign issuers to enter U.S. capital markets by providing several accommodations to foreign practices and polices not inconsistent with the protection of U.S. investors. Foreign companies dispute that, as of the end of 2001, more than 1,300 foreign issuers had entered U.S. capital markets and became reporting companies in reliance on the SEC's accommodations.