Sarbanes Oxley and Corporate Governance

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As you will note below it takes a lot more than bullet points to explain SOX. Here is a lot of good information for you to peruse and choose to use in your paper. Governance is a difficult subject because it involves a lot of legal jargon, but don't let it get you down.

Investors of today need to know that there are mechanisms in place that will protect their investments from misuse, fraud and embezzlement, regardless of whether they are individuals or groups of investors such as funds, banks and other financial institutions, or even governments Investors need assurances that companies will use their investments as intended to improve corporate performance, and practices that assure this are at the heart of effective corporate governance (Gregory, 2000).

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was designed to prevent corporate investing scandals such as those involving Enron and WorldCom where financial reporting was not only incorrect but also deliberately deceitful. SOX, which was enacted to improve and enforce corporate governance and accountability, has serious requirements for creating, managing, security, distribution, archiving, and disposal of vast amounts and varieties of business information. This information includes but is not limited to trade reports, ledgers, electronic communications memos, and correspondence in both electronic and paper form. To be in compliance with SOX companies must reevaluate, consolidate, and integrate enterprise content management strategies with records management (FileNet in Insurance, 2003).

The whistleblower requirements under Sarbanes Oxley are that the audit committee must establish complaint handling procedures; the complaint process must deal with any ...