...Summary of John C. Coates article, “The goals and the promises of Sarbanes-Oxley Act”. On July 25, 2002 the date when stock market indices were making a new history against over publicized corporate scandals, bankruptcy and accounting misstatements, the new legislation “The Public Committee Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002” widely known as Sarbanes Oxley Act was passed by the congress in response to investment company abuses. On the article, “The goals and the promises of Sarbanes-Oxley Act”; John C. Coates, professor of Harvard law & economics school analyzed the pre and post Sarbanes Oxley era and the pros and cons of the SOX legislation. In addition, he recommended that by reconstituting governance and accountability of PCAOB, implication of Sarbanes Oxley can be more effective to safeguard net long term socioeconomic market gain. While discussing about the enforcement in pre Sarbanes Oxley era, Coates pointed out the previous laws and regulations lacked effective implementation of corporate governance. With the threat of systematic corporate misstatements, frauds and rise in significant class action suits, in the pre SOX era investors’ confidence were dramatically declining. As in such scenarios in last decade, Coats describe the core goals on which SOX were formed. First, on its core, “SOX legislation was designed to fix the auditing of U.S public companies.” Second, Sarbanes Oxley was predominantly designed to regulate the “deprofessionalization”...
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...The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Abstract This paper addresses financial analysis standards legislated in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The focus will be on how the legislation enhanced the role of auditing and auditing firms, the impact of whistleblower legislation, and the recent Supreme Court decision. The paper attempts to show that though there continues to be opposition to SOX’s financial reform legislation, there is a case to be made in support of SOX. The research relies on historical data, such as the Enron scandal, and the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court decision that deems SOX as constitutional, to support that legislation is a necessary requirement in today’s global corporate environment, in which some of the largest corporations have proven that, left to their own devices, they will gravitate toward corporate malfeasance. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: WorldCom. Enron. Adelphia. Global Crossing. What do all these companies have in common? They will always be synonymous with the following: financial fraud, corporate malfeasance, internal corruption, and the reason behind the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Not since the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent passage of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Bumgardner, 2003, para. 2), had the country seen such a push for financial reform. Triggered by investigations into corporate fraud by some of the largest and most successful corporations...
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...Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Bus 102 – Dr. Sean D. Jasso John Chi 12/9/2010 Table of Contents - Table of Contents Introduction History of the Act Implementation Impact on Business Policy Analysis Conclusion Appendix References pg. 1 pg. 2 pg. 3 pg. 4 pg. 7 pg. 9 pg. 11 pg. 12 pg. 14 1|P a ge Introduction Corporate Scandals are business scandals that initiate from the misstatement of financial reporting by executives of public companies who are the ones trusted to run these organizations. Corporate scandals are derived in many ways and these misrepresentations happen through overstating revenues and understating expenses, overstating assets and understating liabilities, and use of fictious and fraudulent transactions that gives a misleading impression of the company’s financial status. There were a few corporate scandals that took place in the last decade that forever changed investment policies in corporate America. The companies that are most commonly known for these scandals are Enron, Adelphia, and WorldCom. These companies had hidden their true financial status from creditors and shareholders until they were unable to meet the financial commitments which forced them reveal massive losses instead of the implicated earnings. The ultimate result cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of the affected companies had collapsed. According to Hopwood, Leiner & Young (2002), pg. 130, “the public outcry from the corporate scandals were enormous...
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... two million two hundred thousand in pension plans, and five thousand six hundred jobs (Enron Sentences Will Be Tied to Investor Losses). This all could have been avoided if public companies were forced to changed independent auditors every five years. Throughout this paper, I will be talking about mandatory audit rotation and why I think it is a great idea. First I will talk about the Sarbanes Oxley act and what it requires when it comes to partner rotation. It is important to know what the current rules and requirements are before we discuss how they should be changed. The next item I will discuss is auditor independence and how it is affected by audit rotation. After I talk about the current rules and independence, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of mandatory audit rotation. Sarbanes-Oxley Act In 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent activities by corporations. This act was aimed to improve financial statements of corporations and prevent fraud. In section 203 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it gives the requirements of partner rotation. “The new rules provide that an accounting firm will not be independent if either the lead audit partner or the concurring partner performs audit services for more than five consecutive fiscal years of an audit client. Extending beyond the mandate of Section 203, the final rules also requires a five-year "time-out" period before a partner...
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...MGT7019 | Dr. Jennifer Scott | | | Ethics in Business | Case Study: A primer on Sarbanes- Oxley | <Add Learner comments here> ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Faculty Use Only ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty comments here> ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- <Faculty Name> <Grade Earned> <Writing Score> <Date Graded> Case Study: A primer on Sarbanes-Oxley Leona M. Anderson Dr. Jennifer Scott Northcentral University A Primer on Sarbanes-Oxley Introduction The problem to be investigated is whether Sarbanes-Oxley has helped to improve public trust in the markets and reduce non-ethical practices in business. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was passed by the 107th Congress on July 30, 2002 (Sarbanes-Oxley, 2002) to provide protection to investors and shareholders as a result of fraudulent activities by some U.S. Corporations such as Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and Adelphia, as well as other public companies (Jennings, 2012; Scott & Nganje, 2011). SOX introduced major regulatory changes which affect financial practice and corporate governance; and compliance is mandatory for ALL organizations (Guide to Sarbanes-Oxley, 2006). SOX is actually Public Law 107-204 and it is divided into eleven different...
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...Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 I. Introduction The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (Pub.L. 107-204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002), also known as the 'Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act' (in the Senate) and 'Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act' (in the House) and commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX, is a United States federal law enacted on July 30, 2002, which set new or enhanced standards for all U.S. public company boards, management and public accounting firms. It is named after sponsors U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH). The bill was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals, which cost investors billions of dollars when the share prices of affected companies collapsed, shook public confidence in the nation's securities markets. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not apply to privately held companies. The act contains 11 titles, or sections, ranging from additional corporate board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement rulings on requirements to comply with the new law. Harvey Pitt, the 26th chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led the SEC in the adoption of dozens of rules to implement the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. It created a new, quasi-public...
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...The Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on Corporate America In discussing the impact of one of the most important laws passed in Congress to legislate the accounting and reporting rules of corporations, I need to give a brief definition and some background information for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In 2002, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed into law by the United States Congress. After a series of high profile corporate scandals, such as Enron and WorldCom, the Congress of the United States passed this legislation “to improve and maintain investor confidence. The law requires companies to have more independent board directors (not just company insiders), to adhere strictly to accounting rules, and to have senior managers personally sign off on financial results.” (Bateman, 173). Before the fall of corporations like Enron and WorldCom, there was also far too much corporate fraud during the Internet bubble. According to Stanley Block and his co-authors, “The major accounting firms had failed to detect fraud in their accounting audits, and outside directors were often not provided with the kind of information that would allow them to detect fraud and mismanagement.” (Block, 12). What is the definition, in a nutshell, of the Sabarnes-Oxley Act? This is something that needs to be defined and understood before examining the positive and negative impacts of this law upon corporate America. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act “establishes strict accounting and reporting rules in order to make senior...
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...A Primer on Sarbanes-Oxley The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was declared a law in 2002 (Orin, 2008). The primary purpose of this new law was to convey meaning to restoring faith in corporate America’s financial endeavors (Orin, 2008). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was meant to aid and protect investors, who suffered extreme losses because of corporations having poor financial performances, which was the case before the law was enacted (Orin, 2008). Distinctively, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was meant to concentrate on accounting fraudulence by holding corporations accountable for disclosing accurate and reliable financial records. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was also meant to ensure corporate executive leadership acted ethically throughout daily business (Orin, 2008). Assess the Effectiveness of SOX Legislations Key Ethical Components of the SOX To efficiently and effectively implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act corporations need to broaden their views and focus on the greater purpose of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Beasley and Hermanson (2009) believe to accomplish this corporate leadership need to focus on the following: • Value the purpose of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. • Comprehend the effect of fraudulence behavior. • Concentrate on ethical attitudes pertaining to rationalizing fraudulence behavior. • Making the Sarbanes Oxley Act the foundation to compliance to improve governance and control. • Investigate and implement enterprise risk management (para 5). Value...
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...of Unethical Behavior Article Analysis Ethics: A consciousness of moral importance, a set of moral issues or aspects, the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group, a set of moral principles. To have ethical values is to have a deep sense of responsibility to self and to others (Webster’s Dictionary). When employees practice unethical behavior in the workplace, they are in a sense, displaying a lack of respect not only for themselves, but showing a great deal of disrespect for the company the employee work for. This can further be complicated when dealing with the funds of a company. The repercussions not only affect the company, but also clients, and employees. No greater case has proven this like the Enron Scandal. Enron was an energy trading and communications company based in Houston, Texas. Enron employed 21,000 people by June 2001. Enron was accused of misrepresenting the earning reports. Enron lied about its profits as well as rumors of a number of shady dealings. Enron was also accused of concealing debts so that these debts did not show up on the company's accounts records. There were also rumors of embezzlement of funds from the executives. Shares from Enron dropped from over $90 in the United States to $0.30. This was kept from all investors as well as potential investors who invested in Enron because the inflated financial gain the company was reporting. Due to these unethical accounting practices, it cost both trustees and employees $2...
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...The Favorable Impacts of Sarbanes-Oxley Act Outweigh its Unfavorable Impacts. 1. Introduction. As Eyden indicated in 2012, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, as the reaction to scandals and collapse of several business magnates between 2000 and 2002, aimed at strengthening the accountability of Financial Reporting and audit practices (SOX Has Restored Investors' Confidence, p2). The Act has made considerable contributions since passage. Staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported in 2003 that a series of reforms and improvements regarding Financial Reporting and Accounting Regulations have been implemented since SOX (p.24). According to Hanna (2014), a survey conducted by the Financial Executives Research Foundation in 2005 presented that “83% of large company CFOs agreed that SOX had increased investor confidence.” (para.12). However, Engel, Hayes, and Wang (2004) indicated that many opposed the Act to be too costly and requires too much effort to adapt to its constant changes, especially for small businesses; and it had forced companies out of the public capital market due to the increasing complexity in regulations (p1). Despite all the criticism, the favorable impacts of SOX outweigh unfavorable ones because the Act has facilitated various Accounting Reforms and rebuilt investors’ confidence, both of which carry essential long-term benefits. Moreover, Highlights from Protiviti’s 2015 SOX Compliance Survey proved SOX-related expenses and efforts...
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...Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 Terri Largent BUS591: Financial Accounting & Analysis Dr. Donald Majors August 24, 2015 Fraud is something that the United States and the New York Stock Exchange is all too familiar with, and with the upheaval of many big companies such as Enron, Tyco, Worldcom, Xerox, and Sunbeam, the country’s economic stability took a turn for the worst. However, the year of 2002 brought about many changes for the economic world, most notably to publicly traded companies. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was the beginning of a new, transparent view of the stock exchange and of corporations that publicly sold and traded stock. While we are not out of the woods yet, the world is seeing the benefits of SOX and the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board). There are, however, skeptics and those that do not feel that the price being paid by these companies is worth the amount of stabilization that it has brought to the corporate table. This paper will examine the key components of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, its primary objective, the economic consequences for companies as a result of the implementation of the Act, and will also show how SOX has achieved its goals thus far. Before we can fully appreciate the idea behind the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, we must first take a look at the country’s economic fragility before this law was created. While stock markets were seemingly doing very well in the eyes of the investors, behind the scenes the...
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...hkgfkfljhfghjkffhhhkhgfhgfjdsytfgiug egvdbgfbfgdfssdvbdsfsdvxm,;lcmmncxlxnc,sdnclxz ,x .dmclkdsjflksdjfg b fhthethregTHE EFFECTS OF THE SARBANES-OXLEY ACT AND CANADIAN EQUIVALENT, BILL 198/CSA RULES, ON CANADIAN CROSS-LISTED STOCKS Ben Amoako-Adu * Financial Services Research Centre School of Business and Economics Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 Telephone: (519)-884-0710 x 2327 Email: bamoako@wlu.ca Vishaal Baulkaran Financial Services Research Centre School of Business and Economics Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 Telephone: (519)-884-0710 x 2846 Email: baul2810@wlu.ca ________________________________________________________________________ * Direct correspondence to the contact author, Ben Amoako-Adu. This research was presented at the 2008 Eastern Finance Conference in Florida and the 2008 Midwest Finance Conference in San Antonio, Texas. We would like to thank the discussants of the paper at the above conferences. An earlier version of this paper was discussed at Wilfrid Laurier Finance Workshop in 2007. THE EFFECTS OF THE SARBANES-OXLEY ACT AND CANADIAN EQUIVALENT, BILL 198/CSA RULES, ON CANADAIN CROSS-LISTED STOCKS Abstract Following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), Canada subsequently implemented similar SOX-type rules on Canadian firms by enacting Ontario Bill 198 and the enforcing several of the Canadian Securities Administrators’ (CSA) rules. This paper tests the impact of the...
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...Patrick Chamberlain Dr. Wokukwu Intermediate Accounting October 13, 2011 Corporate Responsibility of Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 To first understand the corporate responsibilities of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, otherwise referred to as SOX; you first need to understand that the Act was created for. The SOX came into effect in July 2002 and it was introduced for major changes to the regulation of corporate governance and financial practice. The act was also known as the ‘Public Company Accounting Reform and investor Protection Act of 2002’ in the senate and was called ‘Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act’ in the house. SOX set new and enhanced standards for all united stated public company boards, management, and public accounting firms. It is named after its sponsors which are Senator Paul Sarbanes ad United States Representative Michael G. Oxley. [6] The bill was enacted as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals. The scandals cost the investors billions of dollars because the share prices of affected companies collapsed, shook public confidence in the nation’s securities markets. These scandals do not apply to privately held companies. [6] The SOX act contains 11 titles and sections that range from additional corporate board responsibilities to criminal penalties, and requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to implement the rulings on the requirements to comply with the law. [6] The 26th chairman...
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...Effect of Unethical Behavior Article Analysis Damon Jones ACC/291 December 11 2013 Harri Eloranta Effect of Unethical Behavior Article Analysis The purpose of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is to restore public confidence in both public accounting and publicly traded securities as well as promote better ethical business practices through greater executive awareness and accountability (Siegel, Franz, & O'Shaughnessy, 2010). In the 1990s, many big companies had misleading and outright fraudulent activity on their account financial statements. Essentially, multiple publicly traded companies jacked up their stock prices by “publishing false or deceptive financial statements” according to (Lasher, 2008). The word ethics has many different means to different individuals or groups; however, ethic is a moral principle or set of moral values held by an individual or group (Dictionary.reference, 2013). Unethical behavior forms from an individual’s personal gain or a business trying to make the business look more profitable than it is. One way that companies mislead investors, by using their own accountant doing the books. When an accountant that works for the company does their books without anyone outside of that company overseeing them, gives them a lot of room to move figures around. The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 is an overseer and protector for investors. The Act has many effects of interest to financial service professionals. It increases the reliability...
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...Within the last ten years corporate scandals such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc., triggered Congress to pass the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Ross, Westerfield, & Jaffe, 2010). False reporting of financial transactions was the number one commonality in all the scandals. In every case, shareholders of the companies suffered hefty losses due to the misrepresentation of the transactions. Almost $11 billion was lost by the shareholders of Enron (Blackburn, 2002). WorldCom shareholders lost about $194 million in total (WorldCom Loss, 2003). $9.2 billion was lost to Tyco shareholders (Giroux, 2008). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is in place because it is meant “to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws, and for other purposes.” (Braddock, 2006). Substantial modifications to corporate governance and business practice regulations were introduced by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Within the Act there are many sections, the most important of which is section 404. Section 404 deals mainly with internal control actions and requires companies to provide details on their internal control structures and policies (“Study of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Section 404 Internal Control over Financial Reporting Requirements”). As with any new regulation there are pros and cons to Section 404; however, it is the most significant because it has increased the reliability and accountability of financial statements, it helped...
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