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These high-profile frauds shook investor confidence and led to demands for. This was in response to a number of financial scandals in the early 2000s involving publicly traded companies including Enron, Tyco and WorldCom. This thorough examination of the public perception and private embracement of Sarbanes-Oxley brings to light the Act's lack of sufficiently specific ethical guidelines, a quality that would ensure the proper management of companies, and compares this finding with an analysis of the provisions of SOX homologues in Europe. Sarbanes-Oxley, also known as SOX, is a major piece of financial legislation which was passed in 2002 in the United States.
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The Act provides protections for investors from false financial reporting and for whistleblowers who report. The act came as a result of several high-profile corporate fraud cases and was designed to deter corporations from committing similar crimes. This paper will discuss the reasons for the Act, its impact and its controversy in an effort to understand its potential for long-term success or failure, as the case may be. The Sarbanes-Oxley act is important because it provides greater oversight for corporations. At the heart of this debate is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was designed to increase accountability but whose implementation has created a host of other problems. However, the way such legislation should be enacted and what it should ultimately accomplish are the subjects of continual debate. When executives ignore the well being of the company's shareholders for the sake of personal profit and upset the precarious balance of the stock markets, putting into question the ethics of the business world and shifting public opinion, legislators must respond quickly and efficiently with new and more comprehensive laws.
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