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WRESTLING WITH REFORM: FINANCIAL SCANDALS AND THE LEGISLATION THEY INSPIRED

"Just the shock of WorldCom, it was several times the size of Enron. Enron, of course, was the largest bankruptcy in history at that time, and then just six or seven months later, WorldCom exceeded that by several times over. Sarbanes-Oxley was about accounting, auditing, it was about corporate governance, but in a larger sense, it was about restoring confidence to investors in the marketplace"

- Peggy Peterson, November 15, 2012 A Measured Response?

Gallery Opens

The virtual museum and archive's tenth Gallery looks at five financial scandals, and the state or federal legislation enacted in response:

  • Burr Brothers, and the Kansas Blue Sky Law of 1911.
  • Constantino Riccardi, and the Arizona Securities Act of 1951.
  • Illegal corporate payments, and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.
  • Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and Michael Milken, and the Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act of 1988.
  • Enron and WorldCom, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Curated by Robert K.D. Colby, History Associates, Inc.

Herb Block

April 21, 1985 "Invasion of the Corporate Body Snatchers," Herblock. Copyright by The Herb Block Foundation

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