So Starbucks is sliding to its first quarterly loss, announcing it would close 650 cafes and cut 13,000 jobs. The Financial Times puts it down to the poor US economy with high gas prices and other...

All eyes will be on Yahoo this Friday with the company's annual shareholder meeting. The meeting was supposed to be showdown between founder Jerry Yang and activist investor Carl Icahn until they...

It's clear that the subprime debacle has resulted in an outpouring of litigation. The trend was fairly obvious just months ago when I looked at the issue here.Now, the trned seems to be gathering...

Is the SOX pain over? Are audit fees really on the way down, or is it a temporary blip?That seems to be the suggestion from the latest Compliance Week analysis, reported in this press release...

Merrill Lynch has shocked the market by announcing it plans to clean up its toxic balance sheet by raising $8.5 billion through a public share offering. That's after revealing another $5.7...

Last week, I did a blog entry attacking the Securities and Exchange Commission for its stunt cracking down on "naked" short selling. At the time, I said it would do nothing to stop market...

Earlier this month, I did a blog entry on how Swiss bank UBS was aiding and abetting tax cheats.Then last week, we had news reports that New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo Thursday has...

The first Siemens manager has been convicted in the trial into the engineering group's bribery and corruption, according to the latest news.Reinhard Siekaczek (pictured above) has been given a...

A lot of focus has gone into the pressures that drive managers into committing fraud. Everything from incentive systems to pressure from analysts. But what about their own behavior? What about their...

The Free Enterprise Fund has never been a big fan of tree huggers and progressives but this time it's gone too far. Its head in the sand mentality is just too bizarre.It has now asked the...

The Lowy family, which is the biggest shopping mall owner in the world, is under investigation for its alleged use of tax shelters in Liechtenstein. And it is making rich families around the world...

Tough talk from Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox last week when he announced an emergency order against "naked" short selling. For the uninitiated and pure at...

That's the fascinating question raised in a new Association of Certified Fraud Examiners report.First of all, the report finds that despite the purported intentions of Sarbanes-Oxley to increase...

It's taken longer than Long March and the great leap forward but China is finally introducing an anti-trust law, reports The Economist.Anyone who has worked in China would know that this has been...

Last week, I did a blog entry looking at whether Web 2.0 applications were vulnerable to hackers and cyber crooks.That's what interested in a recent entry from the folks at Network Observations...

Funny thing about this recession. It seems to be affecting everyone except for accountants. In the past I have done entries, such as this one, looking at the phenomenon.No surprises then that we have...

The endless case of Conrad Black has moved into its latest phase, After the court rejected a plea to toss his conviction on fraud and lying about looting $6.1 million from his media empire, he is...

While heads have rolled in response to the financial crisis, boards of directors have remained relatively unscathed.As the Financial Times points out, there is a real shortage of director talent when...

Never stand between an accounting firm and a bag of money.In the past we have seen KPMG getting embroiled in peddling tax havens for the rich. Now we are seeing revelations that UBS has been helping...

The crisis is the result of Orthodox business strategy.That's the view put forward by strategic adviser Umair Haque in his entry on the Harvard Business Review blog site, titled Saving Strategy...

Some worrying news coming out of China.The Chinese economic juggernaut is slowing down and although it is still maintaining double digit growth, there is a problem with inflation and global setbacks...