That is actually a GOOD thing and it didn't actually stop investors. Infact, US based investors are encouraged by SOX complaint companies.  Again, only Public Listed Companies!

The only type of companies are the entirely put off by SOX are those crooks and fraudulent  companies which are scare of being audited because they got something to hide.

Mikehwy is correct, this came about after Enron and Worldcom case because they inflated their books with various accounting tricks.

Again, it did NOT stop people from investing in US but it did slow those CROOKs and pirate ships from cheating investors money.

Nowadays, there were some of the so called China based companies who got delisted by US exchanges (Nasdaq/NYSE) because they have fail in their proper accounting controls and cheated many investors money. Some of them have to restate their incomes because they used accounting tricks that does not conform to GAAP or US standards.

Yes for investor protection, but No for investor profit, especially for those mid-capital company. However, US standard is different to Malaysia and UK, not so sure how well the investor protection work.