How big a role does the media play in keeping companies honest?According to some academics, it plays an important function. Professor Alexander Dyck from the University of Toronto presented a paper...
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Filed in archive Accounting
by leon on June 28, 2007
Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox has announced a task force to make financial reporting easier for investors to understand.The committee, to be headed up by Robert C....
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Filed in archive litigation
by leon on June 28, 2007
The world's biggest bank has been cleared of insider trading and conflicts of interest, but questions remain about the effectiveness of its so-called "Chinese walls".The Australian...
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Filed in archive markets
by leon on June 27, 2007
More evidence that it's not what you know but who you know. A new study shows that mutual fund managers invest more money in companies that are run by people with whom they went to college or...
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Filed in archive markets
by leon on June 27, 2007
bear stearns has gone into $1.6 billion worth of damage control with the near collapse of two of its hedge funds that had invested heavily in highly rated pieces of collateralized debt obligations,...
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Filed in archive SOX
by leon on June 26, 2007
There is no doubt that Section 404, the section of Sarbanes-Oxley that requires documentation of compliance systems, has added significant costs, disproportionately hurting smaller companies. Since...
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Filed in archive Ethics
by leon on June 26, 2007
Most business schools struggle to teach ethics and social responsibility simply because they don't know how to go about it, according to this interview with London Business School's senior...
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Filed in archive strategy
by leon on June 25, 2007
When it comes to intangible assets, the brand is one of the biggest items sitting on a company's balance sheet. For some, the brand name is absolutely priceless. Think Coca Cola, think GE.But...
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Filed in archive markets
by leon on June 25, 2007
Just finished reading Avner Offer's book The Challenge of Affluence and it offers some powerful insights into the paradox of markets and neoclassical economics. Markets are booming, people are...
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Filed in archive Accounting
by leon on June 25, 2007
So this is how the biggest criminal tax case in US history ends. Prosecutors are now urging urging US District Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss indictments against 12 ex KPMG executives following his...
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Filed in archive markets
by leon on June 23, 2007
Investment in sustainable energy is climbing on the back of concern over climate change, high oil prices and growing government support, according to a UN report.Global investment in sustainable...
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Filed in archive SOX
by leon on June 22, 2007
It certainly does, according to a new University of Pittsburgh study.The study, Sarbanes-Oxley and Corporate Risk-Taking , found that many US companies starting hoarding cash instead of developing...
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Filed in archive executive pay
by leon on June 22, 2007
With new proxy rules requiring companies to reveal perks of $10,000 or more apiece - the old rules limited such disclosures to those valued above $50,000 - the revelations of who's getting what...
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The BAE bribery scandal gets murkier and murkier with revelations that the arms merchant secretly paid nearly £250,000 ($US498,00) for a honeymoon for the daughter of Prince Bandar, the Saudi...
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I have talked about worrying signs that insider trading is back with a vengeance here, here and here. Basically the combination of globalisation, cash sloshing into liquid, buoyant markets and...
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Filed in archive Accounting
by leon on June 20, 2007
Accounting giant Deloitte & Touche has been savaged by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for shortcomings in its handling of clients' books.The PCAOB report makes interesting...
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Filed in archive Accounting
by leon on June 20, 2007
Just how powerful are the Big Four accounting firms? Extremely, or that seems to be the implication from memos written by KPMG lawyers when they were negotiating with prosecutors in 2005, telling...
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Filed in archive executive pay
by leon on June 19, 2007
The rich, as F Scott Fitzgerald said, are different from you and me.Just how different is revealed in a paper by Florida State University's James Ang, Mississippi State University's Gregory...
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There is nothing that gets me more riled than when I read commentators describing fraud and various corporate shenanigans as "victimless crimes".There are real victims. Fraud and corporate...
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Filed in archive risk
by leon on June 18, 2007
In his seminal text Experiences in Groups, the late psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion said healthy groups shared the following characteristics:1. A common purpose, either in overcoming an enemy or pursuing...
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We know all about high-level perpetrators of of securities frauds. Plenty of attention has been placed on the Ken Lays of this world.But little attention has been given to the scam-meisters who sell...
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