The Sarbanes Oxley Act

The audit profession is a relative new comer to the accounting world. The Industrial Revolution, with the growing business sector, was the spark that resulted in auditing techniques being sought out and utilized. Initially, audit techniques and methods were adopted by companies to control costs and detect fraud, which is more closely aligned with internal auditing. However, the need for mandatory oversight of public companies was recognized after the great stock market crash of 1929 (Byrnes, et al., 2012). This brought about the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 creating the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At that point, the SEC was tasked with

One major scandal revealed in 2001 was Enron, a major energy company located in Houston, Texas (Auerbach, 2010, pp. 6). This organization collapsed because of their deceptive accounting practices and mismanagement. In 2001, Enron fraudulent practices became a public scandal, and because of these practices, shareholders lost $74 billion and thousands of employees (pp. 2). Unfortunately, investors lost their retirement accounts and because they lost many employees, it left many people unemployed. Essentially, Enron kept huge debts off their balance sheets. There were so many businesses and investors that were linked to Enron, and its bankruptcy was a major movement in Congress to make a legislative initiative towards the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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

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.

Foremost, a company hires an auditor to preform an audit. He/she is paid $1,000,000 dollars for their services. In addition, the company is willing to pay the auditor an additional $700,000 for providing more services. This additional pay may stem from the auditor’s friendly relationship with the company’s management. This scenario could potentially cause a huge ethical dilemma for the auditor. Given the friendship between the two parties, the auditor could very well be tempted to “cook the books” by management. This could very well happen if the company needs to improve their company’s earnings. Friendship combined with lofty pay could easily persuade the auditor into disregarding the GAAP as well as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Furthermore, the nature of the job is highly unethical. As it violates several provisions of the aforementioned Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The auditor, management, and the top executives of the company will all be affected by this ethical dilemma.

For as long as businesses have existed, so has accounting. With time, it has become more complicated and detailed, but it is still a process of keeping financial accounts in order. Through accounting, or financial reporting, a system is set up to keep track of, maintain and audit the financial proceedings. Because accounting and financial reporting of a business is so important for its accuracy and in general, a lot of ethical, technological and legal concerns are involved. In this paper, we will look identify and explore the concerns of each of these.

Financial reporting has been dissected over and over again by legislation. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hold the key to providing protection and integrity when companies are submitting their financial statements. Although their mission is to provide order and efficiency for financial markets, insidious plans are still developed by companies which ultimately result in turmoil to the economy. To provide a safeguard to investors, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed by congress in 2002, which was constructed because of fraudulent acts of well-known companies such as Enron. Before the SOX was inaugurated, two sets of accounting rules were used as guides for CPA firms.

Has the U.S. Corporate Sentencing Guidelines or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act promoted ethical behavior by employees, or have firms only been interested in avoiding or reducing jail time for their executives?

Yielding too much power results in greater temptation to cheat the system. In light of the shocking truth regarding the Enron scandal and dissemination of one of the “Big Five” accounting firms, Arthur Andersen, more policies and procedures are in place to separate duties and ensure that no single individual can destroy or steal from an entire company. One of the most well-known accounting litigation that was formulated after the Enron scandal is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which force companies to pay close attention to internal controls (Nobles, Mattison, & Matsumura, 2014). Internal controls allows a company to encourage accuracy and reliability of data sent through various individuals responsible for the financial well-being of the

In the begging of 2000’s after a period of corporate scandals involving large public companies, senate enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is referred to as SOX or Sarbon. The act was enacted 14 years ago on July, 30 2002. Also this act was known as the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investors Protection Act of 2002.” There are many serious accounting and corporate scandals that influenced companies Tyco International, Global Crossing, Enron, WorldCom. For instance the bankruptcy of “ENRON” in 2001 was the one of largest bankruptcy in the U.S. history. That time investors lost $74 billion and thousand employees losing their jobs, retirement savings and medical plans. The time during the scandals happened, where the mentioned

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, aims to combat fraud, improve the reliability of financial reporting and restores investor confidence. Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley emphasize the management’s responsibility in maintaining a sound internal-control structure of financial reporting and assessing its own effectiveness. While the auditors’ responsibility is to attest to the soundness of management’s assessment and to report on the state of the overall financial control system. Although it has been a question by most executives, however, some approached the new law with gratitude. As SOX went into effect, more executives had realized the need for internal reforms; they were startled by the weaknesses and gaps of their internal control that compliance reviews and assessments had exposed.

Enron’s collapse had many causes. One of the causes was all the debt that Enron was having due to all the failed direct foreign investments (DFI) they made. At Enron, people tried to trade everything they could. They tried to trade weather derivatives, broadband internet access, water, news, etc.

The Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002, Was established for public governance and financial reporting their obligations and redesigned accounts (Ferrell, Hirt, Ferrell 2009). I feel that this act was an important stepping stone in the right direction This would keep other companies from going down large sums of money. Sarbanes-Oxley was a good Act with in response to the financial scandals that plagued Enron and WorldCom. Before 2001, firms were not as closely monitored by investors, and were more likely to make decisions without any rules or regulation (Madura, Ngo 2010) The scandals of Enron and WorldCom shook consumer faith and confidence in the corporate management of private organizations. People, Customer, Employees lost a lot of trust from this

Enron was a corporation that reached heights unknown, only to watch it fall apart from the inside out based on a foundation of falsehoods and cheating. Enron established a business culture that flourished on competition and was perceived in society as an arrogant corporation, mainly because of its corporate leadership. The fairytale of Enron actually ended as a nightmare with it destroyed by one of America’s largest bankruptcies in history. The demise of Enron impacted the livelihood and futures of numerous employees, their pensions, and in due course impacted Wall Street in a significant way. Even people today are amazed at how such a powerful company met its demise so rapidly. Enron’s end was a product of greed when certain executives of Enron were not eager to accept the failure of their company. The company utilized mark-to-market accounting that detailed the projected impending profits from a long-term deal (Lawry, 2015, p. 28) The results of the deals did not generate revenue as anticipated, but tremendous loss instead. This resulted in Enron accumulating enormous amounts of debt that they attempted to keep classified from the public. Ultimately the truth came to fruition.

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).