Responses
Key capital market participants were too late in recognizing the problems at
Enron, and at many other firms as well, in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Debate about a laundry list of possible changes needed to deter future Enron situations has been widespread.
For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed independent monitoring of audit firms, called for audit firms to sell their consulting businesses or to eliminate certain types of consulting with audit clients and disclosure of analyst involvement and compensation with their firms’ investment banking activities.
Other proposals have suggested changes in stock options,like requiring firms to treat options as a current expense, imposing restrictions on the sale of stock by managers until after they leave office, or requiring top executives to return gains made from selling in a market that had been in uenced by fraudulent nancial reporting.
Many firms are reacting by adding independent
members to their board of directors and by assuring greater nancial expertise and
longer meetings for their audit committees.
While these kinds of changes are likely
to be helpful, we focus here on some more fundamental changes that are porentially needed to address the questions raised in our earlier analysis.