Following a slew of corporate scandals in the early 2000s—most prominently the one involving energy company Enron—the United States government instituted a number of regulatory changes. The largest was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which expanded mandatory financial disclosures, and increased penalties for chief executive officers and chief financial officers who failed to comply. The hope was that, through the impetus of fines and prison time, chief executive officers would change their behavior. READ MORE