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International Accountant

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INTERNATIONAL

APRIL/MAY 2010

ACCOUNTANT
FEATURES INCLUDE

Issue 52
Banking & Finance

Risk & Compliance

International Financial Reporting Standards

Global outlook

Banking & Finance Feature

Is corporate governance a modern fantasy?
Andrew Higson discusses the reality of financial reporting and asks if corporate governance still has a role to play in the modern business world.

W

hat is the difference between the collapse of Enron and the recent collapse of the banking sector? Well, the obvious answer is that Enron’s demise was not as significant. Yet, in the wake of Enron’s collapse, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was rushed into law in the USA in order to cure the perceived corporate ills of, and give back credibility to, corporate America. Organisations around the world have since spent thousands of hours becoming Sarbanes-Oxley compliant in order to be able to continue trading with companies in the USA. At the centre of Sarbanes-Oxley was its focus on strengthening corporate governance procedures to prevent fraud and mismanagement – but the chaos in the banking sector must raise a question over the success of Sarbanes-Oxley and, more significantly, over the whole idea of corporate governance.

way in which an organisation is run and the way in which its results are presented to the outside world. So where does this leave the non-executive directors? One of the main elements in the recent development of corporate governance has been the growth in the use of non-executive directors. One of their roles is to challenge and contribute to the development of the company’s strategy. It is clear from the collapse in the banking sector that the nonexecutives were unable to limit the actions of management. This sudden collapse can be seen to have arisen from the actions and motivations of senior managers rather than from failures in internal controls

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