The rise of Enron took ten years, and the fall only took twenty days. Enron’s fall cost its investors $35,948,344,993.501, and forced the government to intervene by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) 2 in 2002. SOX was put in place as a safeguard against fraud by making executives personally responsible for any fraudulent activity, as well as making audits and financial checks more frequent and rigorous. As a result, SOX allows investors to feel more at ease, knowing that it is highly unlikely something like the Enron scandal will occur again. SOX is a protective act that is greatly beneficial to corporate America and to its investors. Enron was formed following a merger between two natural gas companies in 1985, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.3 When Enron formed, it had accumulated a large sum of debt, roughly 2 billion dollars.4 As a result of deregulation, Enron no longer had the exclusive rights to its pipelines, resulting in the company hemorrhaging money. Kenneth Lay5, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Houston Natural Gas, became Enron’s CEO. Lay knew he had to quickly come up with a new innovation to keep the company afloat. Lay hired McKinsey & Company6 to help in coming up with a business strategy for Enron. McKinsey & Company assigned Jeffrey Skilling7 to Enron’s company as a consultant. Skilling, who had a background in banking, asset and liability management, came up with a solution to Enron’s financial crisis in the gas pipeline business. He said to create a “gas bank”, in which Enron would buy gas from a network of suppliers and sell it to a network of consumers, allowing them to control the supply and price of the gas. Enron’s debt was no more, and Lay was so impressed with Skilling, that he created a new d... ... middle of paper ... ...at when it went down, a whole lot more than just Jill came tumbling after. The entire marketplace crashed, stockholder lost billions, and the government needed to do something. The government finally stepped in and passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was put in place to prevent things like this from ever occurring again. The only problem, what about the people that invested? The people that lost all their money because Enron fell off the top of its hill? What about the companies that were being backed by Enron’s so called “billions”? The people were abandoned, there was nothing the government could do to help them, all the companies that were backed by Enron eventually fell. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a good precaution to prevent things like the Enron scandal from occurring, and hopefully, making sure the people never have to suffer through that kind of loss again.
Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley Acts are important legislations in the corporate world because of their link to public and privately held companies. Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted to enhance transparency and accountability in publicly traded companies. On the contrary, Dodd-Frank Act was enacted to disentangle the confused web of financial service company valuations. Actually, these valuations are usually hidden by complex and unclear financial instruments. The introduction of Sarbanes-Oxley Act was fueled by recent incidents of accounting frauds by top executives of major corporations such as Enron. In contrast, Dodd-Frank Act was enacted as a response to the tendency by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, rating agencies, and accounting companies to serve up harmful offer of ruined assets and liabilities brought by systemic non-disclosure (Anand, 2011, p.1). While these regulations have some similarities and differences, they have a strong relationship with the financial markets.
...The Sarbanes-Oxley Act deals with the proper filing of financial paperwork along with rules and regulations to follow while working as a top business (The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002). Some of the consequences that derived from the Act include fines and possible imprisonment up to 20 years for destroying documents. It also made it a crime to destroy corporate audit records. Since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was in place at the time Bernie Madoff was charged with security fraud, he received 25 years in prison for his wrong-doings (Bernard Madoff, 2014). These crimes by Madoff and Enron have made for safer business practices and stricter laws. However, to ensure cases of this magnitude do not occur again, companies must not only abide by mandated law, they must develop a culture deeply rooted in strong ethics. Character matters in a business just like it does in people.
In July of 2002, Congress swiftly passed the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investors Protection Act at the time when corporations like Arthur Anderson, Enron and WorldCom fell due to fraudulent accounting practices and bad internal control. This bill, sponsored by Mike Oxley (R-OH) and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), became known as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).It sought to restore public confidence in publicly traded companies and their accounting practices, though the companies listed above were prosecuted on laws that were already in place before SOX. Many studies have examined the effects of SOX on corporations in the past eleven years. The benefits are hard to quantify and the cost are rather hard to estimate including the effect on market efficiency.
Investors and the media once considered Enron to be the company of the future. The company had detailed code of ethics and powerful front men like Kenneth Lay, who is the son of a Baptist minister and whose own son was studying to enter the ministry (Flynt 1). Unfortunately the Enron board waived the company’s own ethic code requirements to allow the company’s Chief Financial Officer to serve as a general partner for the partnership that Enron was using as a conduit for much of its business. They also allowed discrepancies of millions of dollars. It was not until whistleblower Sherron S. Watkins stepped forward that the deceit began to unravel. Enron finally declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, leaving employees with out jobs or money.
Many athletes that are so much better than other average athletes are always subject to the question of “Are you on steroids?” Steroids have many slang terms such as roids, juice, pumpers, gym candy, and many other humorous names. There are many Pros and Cons to anabolic steroids. The biggest one is health risk and that can go on for a while, but we will start with how they say it is bad for your long term health and how it can keep you from having kids. They say it is bad for your health because people that took it back in the 80s abused it and didn’t know any better. It 's still a bad drug it 's just in the new day and age people have found a smarter more efficient way to take steroids, yet they still frown upon it. The FDA just contradicts themselves when they say
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 controls and reporting within accounting and finance and the managerial aspects of public companies (2). Among the many objectives of SOX the most important objective is to oversee public accounting, publicly reporting companies, and the investment industry; however, SOX needed assistance in order follow through with these objectives:
By doing the research before you buy, you can get a good idea of what the product has to offer. DBAL Max offers a money back guarantee, therefore, if you are not happy with the product, you can get your money back without any hassles, unlike some of the other product brands. A site that doesn't offer this option is a red flag that you are not using the best possible supplement. When it comes to building muscle mass, DBAL Max is incomparable.
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was enacted in 2002 as an anti-fraud measure in the wake of large accounting scandals such as Enron and WorldCom. Until recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) applied the same SOX auditing practices to all companies, regardless of their size, infrastructure, level of risk, or available resources. As long as it was publicly traded, whether the market cap was less than $75 million or more than $100 billion, the same auditing rules and standards applied for all companies.
Anabolic steroid use is very dangerous and illegal in the USA. Steroid abuse is where danger comes into play. Anabolic steroids can be used safely with many positive effects and minimize the side effects if used safely, and in moderation. "I used steroids. It was a risky thing to do, but I have no regrets. It was what I had to do to compete. The danger with steroids is overusage. I only did it before a difficult competition – for two months, but not for a period of time that could harm me. And then afterward, it was over. I would stop. I have no health problems, no kidney damage or anything like that from using them." (Schwarzenegger) The positive side effects of steroids include increase in the male sex hormone (testosterone); which spikes improved recovery rate, increase in euphoria, gain in strength and size, increase in sex drive, and beco...
The three main crooks Chairman Ken Lay, CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow, are as off the rack as they come. Fastow was skimming from Enron by ripping off the con artists who showed him how to steal, by hiding Enron debt in dummy corporations, and getting rich off of it. Opportunity theory is ever present because since this scam was done once without penalty, it was done plenty of more times with ease. Skilling however, was the typical amoral nerd, with delusions of grandeur, who wanted to mess around with others because he was ridiculed as a kid, implementing an absurd rank and yank policy that led to employees grading each other, with the lowest graded people being fired. Structural humiliation played a direct role in shaping Skilling's thoughts and future actions. This did not mean the worst employees were fired, only the least popular, or those who were not afraid to tell the truth. Thus, the corrupt culture of Enron was born. At one point, in an inter...
Enron Corporation started back in 1985. It was created as a merger of Houston Natural Gas and Omaha based InterNorth as a interstate pipeline company (CbcNews). Kenneth Lay was the former chief executive officer of Houston natural gas merged his company with another natural gas line company, Omaha Based InterNorth. During the time of the merger there were many arguments amongst the two companies and in the end Ken Lay the former C...
Football star Lyle Alzado died at the age of 42 from a brain disease that Alzado admitted was caused by his steroid use” (Root, 2011). If the risk of death is not enough to scare you then not much will. Steroids are not worth the risk. Side effects for men include: develop breasts, shrunken testicles, infertility, decreased sperm count, impotent. Side effects for women include: face and body hair, deep voice, menstrual irregularities, reduced breast size, masculinized female fetus. Side effects for both men and women include: acne, oily scalp/skin, yellow skin, baldness, tendon rupture, heart attacks, enlarged heart, risk of liver disease and liver cancer, bad cholesterol, mood swings, rage, delusions (DeNoon, 2005). The long list of side effects outweighs the list of benefits by a long shot. Steroids are only legal if prescribed by a doctor. People who doctors prescribe anabolic steroids to: “Requires bone marrow stimulation or prevention of bone loss, Needs artificial induction of male puberty, Needs appetite stimulation and preservation of muscle mass due to wasting conditions such as AIDS or cancer, Decides to undergo gender reassignment procedures” (Hirby). It is sometimes healthy to take steroids when a doctor prescribes it, because steroids are not always bad. If steroids are used for the right reasons they can be beneficial, but if not they are very
Many people think that steroids are the best thing ever when in fact they tear the human body apart and ruin some lives. Before taking steroids people should think long and hard about the side effects and consequences. Steroid hurt the body and it also hurts people economically.
Does one think their body can handle the juice! Steroids have benefited many different lifestyles but, what most don’t know is the effects on the body. There are two types of steroids; anabolic and androgenic. However, most know about the anabolic steroids because they are used to increase the body’s strength, muscle mass, and faster recovery after intense workouts. Androgenic is involved in developing male characteristics. Also, steroids are used as a treatment for certain conditions. Many know that there are many effects with the use of steroids but, they don’t know how they can affect the body. Therefore, steroids have been around for a long time, for they’ve been used for treating medical conditions and have been abused to enhance athletic
The case study for unit 4 is in regards to one of the biggest corporate scandals in the United States. Enron was ranked in the top in fortune 500 companies, with reported revenues of $111 billion (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2009). The key word in that was reported, because shortly after their corporation collapsed in debt. The question became how can a company that just reported $111 billion in revenue be in debt? Enron lead executives of the company were falsely reporting income that had yet-to-obtained (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2009).