The Situation The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (or “SOX”) is one piece of legislation many lawmakers now swear by. However, for many business owners, it’s the law they now swear at. Enacted in response to the financial scandals that took down Enron, WorldCom, and several other large corporations, the act set new accountability standards for publicly-traded companies and for public accounting firms. It requires companies to undergo periodic SOX audits, which sometimes reveal knotty financial and asset management problems. In the case of Patterson-UTI Energy, a Houston-based company that provides onshore contract drilling services to oil and gas exploration companies, management worried that an impending SOX audit was going to reveal challenges around Patterson-UTI purchased t

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