The reason companies have to produce annual reports and submit to audits and all those SEC regulations is these were forced on them by the stock exchanges - by investors who were just plain tired of being lied to, cheated, and ripped off. "Want to sell your stock on our exchange? Follow our rules or forget it".
Wherever you see "burdensome government regulation", that is because somewhere in the distant past, that regulation was found necessary to reign in rampant abuse. "Deregulation" is favored by business so they can reinstate those past abuses.
Think of the 19th century financiers and industrialists who were described as "Robber Barrons". They were called this in honor of a long history of actual robber barrons in the centuries before them.
Business will do what it can get away with, always has, always will. If you want honest businesses, then make sure dishonest ones can't get away with much. The citizenry gets the degree of dishonesty it's willing to tolerate, and right now, that's quite a bit.