... values drop drastically from nearly $100 in December 2002 to junk bond status.3 It's directors, such as UK non-executive director Lord Wakeham, faced extensive legal action, while auditors Andersens have their reputation left in tatters as a result of indisputable evidence that they were actively destroying physical evidence of fraud at Enron. The reaction in the United States was a stern legal attempt to prevent such failures happening again, culminating in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of July 2002. Across the Atlantic in the UK there was already much activity in relation to corporate governance, and improvements had been ongoing since 1998. However the Enron debacle caused worldwide awareness of corporate governance weaknesses and prompted action to be taken. The corporate governance failings thrown into question in the Enron scandal and other major corporate collapses, concerned the effectiveness of non-executive directors and the audit function. In the UK two reports were published in ...

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