What Is Sarbanes Oxley?

When the Enron and MCI scandals broke, it became clear to the US government as well as everyone else that something needed to be done to prevent financial abuses from harming the public. A bipartisan team of legislators led by Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael G. Oxley put together the Sarbanes Oxley Act, also titled the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, and more manageably called SOX for short. It was overwhelmingly passed by the House of Representatives, and the Senate voted unanimously to pass the Sarbanes Oxley bill.
The Sarbanes Oxley Act was signed into federal law on July 30, 2002. Its primary purpose is to protect investors by making corporate information released about accounting and finance more accurat View the rest of this article