The implementation of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 – hereinafter referred to as the “SOA”) was directly due to the unparalleled financial scandals and resultant dramatic fall of trust in financial markets of investors and key entities operating on such markets: investment advisors, auditors, publicly traded companies (and more precisely, their Management Boards). The SOA superior objective was to regain investors’ trust through significantly aggravated independence requirements imposed on the financial market key players as well as highly-increased requirements within internal control efficiency of entities registered with the US Securities Exchange Commission (“SEC”).
The SOA consists of eleven chapters and discusses a wide range of issues: from formation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (“PCAOB”) which is, among others, responsible for creating a new standard of auditing financial statements together with the integrated audit, through defining new auditor’s independence requirements, determining the scope of liability of the companies’ management, defining new requirements within appropriate internal control mechanisms and their annual rating and, finally, corporate fraud problems.
