Download or read book Changes in Market Responses to Financial Statement Restatement Announcements in the Sarbanes Oxley Era written by Jana Hranaiova and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We examine changes in the market's response to financial statement restatement announcements during the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) era. We define this era as beginning with the U.S. Department of Justice initiation of a criminal investigation into the collapse of Enron, and its attendant loss of billions of dollars of shareholder value, through the November 15, 2004, requirement that all U.S. companies with market capitalizations over $75 million must comply with SOX Section 404, which deals with corporate internal controls over financial reporting We divided the Sarbanes-Oxley era into pre- and post-SOX periods, with the dividing line concurrent with the signing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act into law on July 30, 2002. The comparison of pre- and post-SOX periods shows that post-SOX, the negative impact on companies announcing restatements is reduced 71 percent on average (as measured by the cumulative abnormal return on days 0 and 1) and the positive market response to announced restatements is reduced by 33 percent. This translates into a net reduction in lost market value of $207 million per restatement announcement or $74.4 billion in total market value for the two-day announcement event window. We also find that this reduction is not due to the diluting effects of the increased number of statistically insignificant post-SOX market reactions to restatement announcements. Finally, our results indicate that after SOX became law, post-announcement abnormal returns exhibit statistically significant lower volatility and the trend in statistically insignificant market responses to restatement announcements no longer declines, thus indicating less uncertainty on the part of investors regarding the announcements of restating companies, and perhaps because investors believe the disclosed information conveyed by the restated financials is timelier and of higher quality.