four important business trends should be noted.The first trend discussed in the preceding section have led to profound changes in business practices.Executives at Enron,WorldCom,and other companies lied when they reported financial results,leading to huge stockholder losses.These companies CEOs later claimed not to have been aware of what was happening,and their knowledge (or lack thereof) was a central issue in their trials.As a result,Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which requires the CEO and CFO of a firm to certify that the firm's financial statements are accurate. These executives can be sent to jail if it later turns out that the statements did not meet the required standards.Consequently,businesses beefed up their internal and external auditing procedures,and the accuracy of published statements has improved.