In The Wake Of The Massive Securities Fraud That Caused

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.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is referred to as SOX. SOX’s goal was to primarily fix the

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.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act was a game changer for corporations all across the United States. Prior to Sarbanes-Oxley Act, big name companies such as Enron, Kmart and Tyco were more inclined to have fraudulent activities happen internally. Having all these issues arise during the last decades, Congress was anxious to act and create Sarbanes-Oxley Act with the intentions to protect investors and have strict reforms to deter internal financial frauds from occurring again. Although, this reform has had a great amount of success in achieving its goals, it also has some holes that were not well though out, when it comes to the entirety of it. The main problem with Sarbanes-Oxley is the cost it has on smaller companies, which shifted the power from the investors and into the auditors. (Prince, 2005)

Jahmani Y. & Dowling W., (2008). The Impact of Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Journal of Business &

This guideline helps in brining substantive change in Sarbanes Oxley Act. It has been analyzed that SOX require audit work papers and other relevant information for the period of minimum seven years. These ramifications within a short period help in improving the effectiveness of Sarbanes Oxley Act. SOX are also focused towards using the internal auditors as a critical resource management. Through the internal auditors resources within the organization can be allocated easily and frauds can be controlled (Mayo, 2010). SOX have also developed security professionals in order to handle the issues related to frauds and other internal control problems. Enron is the best example of proving the effectiveness of ramification of Sarbanes Oxley Act.

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 was legislated by Congress to restore reliability of financial statements with the objectives to raise standards of corporate accountability, to not only improve detection, but to also prevent fraud and abuse (Terando & Kurtenbach, 2009). Additionally, SOX was the response to general failure of business ethics such as the propagation of abusive tax shelters and greater aggressive tax avoidance strategies (Raabe, Whittenburg, Sanders, & Sawyers, 2015).

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act was passed into law in 2002. It was created in response to major financial scandals that largely shook the public's confidence in corporate accounting practices. It was a significant response to improper record handling techniques. Under the law, corporate managers must assess whether they have sufficient safeguards to catch fraud and bookkeeping errors. There are consequences for not complying with the provisions of the act and there are certainly advocates and opponents of it. Price Waterhouse Coopers says "Without a doubt, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is the single most important piece of legislation affecting corporate governance, financial disclosure and the practice of public

Following the failure of Enron in December 2001, in the wake of accounting scandals at major corporations Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and others, Congress proposed legislation to reform the governance of public companies to make boards of directors, CEOs and chief CFOs accountable for corporate misconduct, according to Wikipedia. Sarbanes-Oxley makes employees at public companies individually responsible for providing true and accurate information about companies’ financial statuses and practicing due diligence to secure proprietary information on investors, customers, and

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act also known as SOX came into existence in July 2002 and led to key changes to the regulation of corporate governance and financial practice in addition to setting a number of non-negotiable deadlines for compliance. Its purpose is to protect shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices, as well as improve the accuracy of corporate disclosures. It is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, who were its main originators. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed through both houses of Congress on a surge of bipartisan political support. Public shock influenced the political process. Congress was compelled to react assertively to the Enron media fallout, a struggling stock market, and impending re-elections. As a result, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in the Senate

The Sarbanes Oxley Act allowed the federal government to have durable guidelines of corporate governance along with inspecting the ethics for public companies. SOX creates the boundaries in regards to accounting companies and what they can offer These are services like: consulting, allowing corporate auditing organizations more responsibilities and accountabilities, enforcing public companies to make improved public releases - such as core financial controls assessment and permitting improved criminal and civil sanctions (Kessel, 2011). Moreover, SOX created the Public Company

The year 2002 marked a critical time for many corporate businesses as it was known for one of the most infamous years in organizational scandal. The Enron debacle, Tyco, Adelphia, and WorldCom all were involved in some sort of corruption. These corporations misfortunate mishaps was the driving force for the implementation of ethical laws. One law in particular was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). This law was enacted to help restore integrity and public confidence to the financial markets (Orin, R. 2008). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is not a law that is new to the scene of corporate America, in fact in 1934 the Securities and Exchange Commission was introduced to help police the U.S. financial markets. As a result,

With the fall of Enron, WorldCom, and several other major corporations in the late 1990’s, the need for transparency and accountability in accounting was brought to the forefront for investor’s and board member’s alike. Paul Sarbanes, a former senator from Maryland, and Mike Oxley, a former member of the House of Representatives from Ohio, together created what is now known as the most important legislation since the 1930’s (Litvak, 2014). This bill, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, changed the way companies that offer public securities did business. No longer would a publicly offered company get to create and govern its internal controls; they would now be regulated by

The act requires management and independent auditors to continuously evaluate a firm’s internal financial-reporting controls on a yearly base. Furthermore, SOX stiffens disclosure guidelines, requires management to attest the firm’s reports, reinforces boards’ independence and financial-literacy requirements, and increases auditor-independence standards.

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