This paper has been written as a guide to The Sarbane-Oxley Act (SOA). The use of the enclosed material may be used to introduce students to the legislation. Corporate governance is very important especially after the scandals U.S. businesses recently endured. Armed with the knowledge of SOA, the reader will be assisted with understanding the sections, compliance and some implications of the act. The student will then be able to conduct further study with this knowledge and assist their corporation in the methods of compliance through further research. Compliance of this Act is non-negotiable, all publicly traded companies will comply with the legislation by June 2004. There are useful references given throughout the paper, this will assist the student in deriving a management plan and or choosing a vendor to provide the external controls that are required by SOA. Methods of retrieving information were derived from personal interviews with account managers at large corporations, (who asked not to be named), heavy use of the Securities Exchange Commission's web-site and a thorough review of the 89 pages of the Sarbane-Oxley legislation. The SOA should not be taken lightly, the prudent company will have already taken measures to comply with this important legislation.
INTRODUCTION
"The Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" was signed into law by President Bush on July 30, 2002. The law is now known as The Sarbane-Oxley Act (SOA). The SOA has eleven titles within the act and numerous sections, pertaining to ethics, accounting, financial reporting, responsibilities of officers, whistleblower protection, and increased criminal penalti ...