The big corporate scandals at Enron and WorldCom have left a legacy that affects virtually every business in the developed world.
In the wake of the two cases, the US Government rushed through new legislation in the shape of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (otherwise known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act 2002), which placed strict rules on companies to manage their information in a much more accountable way. And, for the first time, it made senior board members personally responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the figures they reported.
