The massive sentences handed out to the likes of WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers and Enron's Jeff Skilling have sparked plenty of debate about whether the punishment fits the crime.Writing in The...

Earlier this year, I did an entry looking at Dell's accounting problems and how it had run into with the Securities and Exchange Commission.At the time, I suggested that Dell's accounting...

Mixed news coming out from Financial Executives International showing that Section 404 compliance costs with Sarbanes-Oxley are headed south. Well, kind of.According to the press release, total...

Last year I wrote about corporate delinquents.Basically, I argued that unless we were talking about one individual with his or her hand in the till, most corporate fraud involved a delinquent...

When it comes to selecting companies for business ethics, corporate beauty contests are now all the rage.Which is what caught my attention when Ethisphere, one of the better ethics journals around,...

How good are analysts at detecting accounting fraud? Not that great, according to new research.A joint study by Julie Cotter from the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, and Susan M....

The preoccupation with independent directors under Sarbanes-Oxley is misguided, says Wayne State University law professor Erica Beecher-Monas. After all, Enron and WorldCom had independent directors...

Some stories are just too good to ignore.The former owner of Penthouse magazine's publisher has agreed to settle civil accounting fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission,...

Earlier this year, I did a piece looking at the the scandal about Iraq's oil production and the missing revenues.The problem in Iraq, as I pointed out at the time, is that four years into the US...

Last week, I talked here and here about how insider trading was becoming more of a problem.Now, as if on cue, we have the extraordinary story of two Morgan Stanley executives have been charged with...

The Siemens bribery scandal continues to deepen. The company is in the unusual position of seeing its reputation getting trashed and at the same time, its profits are rising.So are Siemens' woes...

The odds of world bank president Paul Wolfowitz resigning are getting shorter, according to figures from intrade.com published in the Village Voice.US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has come out in...

This year's Berkshire Hathaway AGM, usually known as the "Woodstock for capitalists", did not pass without some uncomfortable moments.Like when Warren Buffett was taken to task over his...

MBA students expect the lowest amount of pay from accounting, auditing and tax work, according to a Fortune survey.According to the survey (which you can check out in full here), MBA students had the...

The bizarre failure of the private equity bid for Qantas has raised a lot of questions and destroyed quite a few reputations. Starting with the qantas board, led by chairman Margaret Jackson, and the...

Earlier this week, I asked the question whether insider trading was back. That was after a Credit Suisse investment banker was arrested for dirty deals involving the $45 billion TXU buyout.Now it...

Providing some sort of work life balance not only gives you better-adjusted employees, it might also result in a more ethical workplace, according to a new survey reported here.According to the...

Last year I did a post on research showing that business school students are more likely to cheat than students in other graduate programs.Now we have news that MBA students at Duke University have...

In the past, I have written about Apple's environmental issues and the way it has handled the backdating of options.Now Apple has announced it's boosting its green credentials by reducing or...