Not surprising but interesting nonetheless. A new study Who Blows The Whistle on Corporate Fraud shows the problem with Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires audit committees to...

The "law of unintended consequences", discussed here, happens when one action results in an outcome that's completely unintended. No-one thought of it at the time.One of the best known...

Hedge funds should open their books to regulator says former Citigroup chief executive officer Sandy Weill.In an interview in Der Spiegel, Weill says hedge funds should report to one regulator who...

And you thought the world of accountants was quiet? Not the place for sex wars? Think again!According to a new survey, nine out of 10 male beancounters thinks what they like to call their career has...

At the end of last year, I did a blog entry on how more and more accounting jobs will be outsourced to India with estimates of 1.6 million US tax returns being prepared over there by 2011.Now we...

Every company knows why reputation is important, particularly in an economy where most of the market value of any business comes from intangible assets such as brand equity, goodwill and workforce...

The Siemens scandal gets worse and worse. It's now broadened with reports that the company has identified individual incidents of apparent bribery at three other divisions as part of its...

It's a sign of the times. Whole Foods Markets CEO John Mackey in a letter to his employees, republished in Fast Company, has announced that he is taking a massive pay cut - to just $1 a...

The smell over the Apple share backdating mess gets worse and worse.Now the Securities and Exchange Commission has widened its investigation into the matter after it emerged that Apple chief...

Extraordinary corporate governance development in South Korea last week when Hyundai Automotive Group chairman Chung Mong-koo, was handed a surprise three-year sentence for high-profile...

Week of mixed fortunes for embattled ex-media tycoon Conrad Black. And on the balance of things, he has come off second best in the lead up to his multi-million fraud trial kicking off next month....

With private equity predators circling British supermarket chain Sainsbury and the monster buyout of Equity Office Properties, the biggest landlord in the United States outside of the US Government...

Towards the end of last year, I talked about the president's kid brother, Marvin, and stock option backdating. His little bro was a director of HCC Insurance Holdings at the time when it was...

The global economy is doing fine but industries are now confronting huge risks and issues. These include convergence of products and industries; the rising cost of capital; the end of low inflation;...

More developments this week in the Australian corporate regulator's lawsuit against Citigroup for insider trading and failing to manage the conflicts of interests involving its proprietary...

A week from hell for morgan stanley. First it gets fined $300,000 for failing to stop a trader from entering the wrong order for stocks. How wrong? Well, the order was for $10.8 billion of stocks,...

Significant news that Microsoft has overtaken Johnson & Johnson and topped the Reputation Quotient survey. Johnson & Johnson has been at the top for seven years so it's no small feat.Even...

At the end of last year, I wrote about the struggles of The Coca Cola Company with diversity. It's a shameful history culminating several years ago in a close to $200 million lawsuit involving...

Much attention at the end of last week on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which predicted dire consequences of heat waves, cyclones, droughts, rising seas, if the world failed to...

One of my pet hates is the way language is used to hide the truth and keep people in the dark. I have talked about the corporate governance and ethics implications here and here.In his book Unspeak,...