The first was the motivation on the part of Ebbers and Sullivan. The second was the complicity of employees within WorldCom's accounting department. The third was the complicity of the external auditor, Arthur Andersen. In order to prevent such frauds from occurring, these different factors should be addressed. With respect tot Ebbers and Sullivan, two problems occurred that should be prevented in future.

The first is the heavy emphasis on option-laden compensation. This created an incentive for Ebbers to manipulate the company's stock, as his options were under water. A greater emphasis on hard salary and bonuses would partially address this problem, or an emphasis on performance-based compensation that takes long-run performance into account would be more useful. In addition, too much control was held by too few. For instance, the internal auditor was informed by the external auditor that he only answered to Sullivan. This concentration of power enabled...
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