With Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones on a knife-edge , my colleague Matthew Ricketson sets out the pros and cons of the prospective takeover here.And the negatives are worrying. This takeover...

French executives are the fattest cats in Europe.A poll in Fortune found that French executives took 10 of the 20 top spots, including first and second place.Top of the heap was Carlos Ghosn, CEO of...

KPMG has been hauled over the coals by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for some pretty basic deficiencies. Read through the PCAOB report , and you realize we are talking Accounting...

Following another dismal day on Wall Street at the end of last week, amid concern that tightening credit conditions may lead to a slowdown in housing activity, the market is a state of heightened...

In the past, I have looked at how most codes of ethics aren't worth the paper they're written on.Still, codes of ethics are important because they outline the values and principles management...

Next time you get an email from the US Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission or Internal Revenue Service, hit delete.Identity thieves have sent out thousands of bogus emails in an attempt to...

I have talked about climate change liability risks for company directors here and here. Climate change has all the potential of turning into a major corporate governance issue.Jeffrey Smith and...

As a business book junkie, I have pored through countless texts that claim to reveal the blueprint for lasting success, the path from good to great, and various formulae for a fail-safe strategy that...

An interesting paper from Australian economist John Quiggin which sends an explosive message to politicians and business all over the world.Quiggin's arguments suggest that the force now...

Fund managers have ridden the coat-tails of the baby boomers, ignoring the next generation of clients and that could create enormous problems for the financial services industry, according to a new...

The amount of spoiling around the last book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, released last week, has raised a number of important questions about ethics. I write this as someone who...

Nearly five years after the most stringent anti-fraud and corporate governance measures were introduced in the US, and fraud is still strong.According to a new study from the Deloitte Forensic...

Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, it was so stupid and flawed that the time must have been 2am!Pilloried by congressmen and the banking industry, the Securities and Exchange has...

In this age of skills shortages, it's interesting to read how the Big Four are going about managing, keeping and attracting their talent. The big accounting firms could also teach other companies...

Conrad Black has been released on bail but barred from leaving the United States.Still, the arguments continue about Black's financial wherewithal with prosecutors claiming Black has repeatedly...

The market seems to be bracing itself for the next shoe to drop with the two Bear Stearns hedge funds which had bet big on subprime mortgage sector now virtually worthless. The $1.6 billion bailout...

The latest Transparency International Progress Report on OECD Convention Enforcement suggests that the battle against bribery and corruption has run into a brick wall.The report blames it on a lack...

The fallout from the KPMG tax shelter case continues.Earlier this week, we saw Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissing criminal charges against 13 former partners of accounting giant KPMG. The judge's...

For business, first the good news. People trust business more than government, according to the latest Edelman Trust barometer. The global figures show that trust in business is on the up and trust...

At the beginning of the month, I did a blog entry looking at the fifth anniversary of Sarbanes-Oxley.To mark the occasion, CFO Europe has released a survey showing that three out of four US CFOs and...

It's taken some time coming but Google has announced it's extending its Google Apps online software suite for companies and organizations to non-profits.The announcement from the blog of...