Foreign firms are also materially more likely to delist from U.S. equity markets after SOX (see
Figure 4). Again, as with U.S. firms going dark, delisting firms are smaller and have low trading
volumes in U.S. exchanges (Marosi and Massoud 2008; Woo 2011). These firms had weaker
governance (e.g., less independent boards, higher separation of control and cash flow rights,
indicating greater agency problems), and were from countries with weaker investor protections
(Hostak, Karaoglu, Lys, and Yang 2013). While investors in these firms presumably suffered when
the firms deregistered, and managers and controlling shareholders benefited by cutting compliance
costs and market scrutiny, the social impact on the U.S. is less clear. Similar to domestic U.S. firms
that deregistered, foreign firms that delisted have characteristics that make them more likely to have
accounting problems and fraud.