Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Sulphur dioxide is a toxic gas with a pungent, irritating smell. Its chemical formulation is not SOX, however, but SO₂.

SOX, by contrast, is the The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a pungent and tedious piece of US consumer protection legislation introduced as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals, including Enron and WorldCom.

If Enron is the horse, oblivion the paddock to which it bolted and the executive branch of the US government the stable, then Sarbanes-Oxley is the door.