Lessons from Bear on SOX
Is there potential SOX internal controls liability for Bear executives? If not, and melt-downs like this can happen after SOX (worth $80+/share one day, $2 the next), then what was it, exactly, that SOX did for us? Could it be that SOX didn't eliminate risk after all?
And Tom Kirkendall sees shades of Enron here. When you're a trust-based business and the trust is gone, your value can evaporate mighty quickly. Skilling pointed out that that's exactly what happened at Enron. Tom K notes that it would have happened at AIG had that company not cut a deal with Big E. Tom says, "such loss is simply one of the risks of investing in a company based on a trust-based business model." Does this mean that Enron was all about inherent risk in the market, and not about fraud?
So two possible lessons from Bear: We didn't need SOX, and it didn't do any good.
Posted by Larry Ribstein on March 17, 2008 at 06:31 AM in Corporate governance, Finance, Sarbanes-Oxley | Permalink
