Recent trends in corporate governance practices in the USA

Seven years have passed since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley or the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. Since then, there has been much debate over the costs and benefits of the most far reaching reforms of US business practices since the time of FDR. Glaring abuses in corporate governance continue to capture the headlines as details revealing sky-high executive compensation as well as reports of conflicts of interests and a variety of breaches of fiduciary duties. But have corporate governance standards improved? In this paper, we postulate that corporate governance has four pillars – board of directors, audit committees, poison pills, and executive and director compensation and ownership. Using the data from 2003 to 2008, we examine recent trends in various aspects of corporate governance that includes board issues, audit committees, poison pills, and executive compensation.