The collapse of a number of large companies such as Enron Corporation (Moncarz et al., 2006), WorldCom
(Thornburgh, 2006), Global Crossing (Gomez, 2008) and Adelphia (Barlaup et al., 2009) at the turn of the 21st
Century, after the publication of financial accounts which were found to be misleading, affected the confidence of
investors and led to legislative responses typified by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 in the United States.. These
accounting scandals raised general questions concerning the reliability of financial information in the US capital