Spring is in the air, the sap is rising, and so are the howls of moral outrage over the Enron fiasco. There are few things more entertaining than misplaced righteous indignation. "Your ship is going down and you're going to be lashed to the mast unless you start talking to us." Such was the verbal horsewhipping a recalcitrant Joseph Berardino, CEO of embattled accountancy giant Arthur Andersen, received at the hands of an enraged Congressman.
On January 22, 2003, as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final rules regarding auditor independence. The new rules impose more rigorous standards of independence for the external auditors of SEC reporting companies (including foreign private issuers) than under existing SEC rules.