So far, the wave of lawsuits and official action arising out of the stock options backdating scams has focused on the public companies that had provided the benefits.But questions are now being asked...

The alpha male boss seems to be part of corporate life. The strong leader is always in demand. Witness the popularity of the Donald Trump Apprentice TV series which sends out the wrong message on how...

What are the big issues and risks confronting business today?Hard to go past an excellent summary of the 25 forces in this piece The Big Issues from my good friend David James.So what are some of the...

In between the porn, the hilarious solicitations from supposedly willing Russian chicks and ads touting everything from Viagra to organ enlargements, there's been a rush of spam mails telling the...

The court battle between Australian timber giant Gunns and wilderness campaigners has become a textbook example for companies around the world on how NOT to deal with stakeholders. Gunns has locked...

What are the six tell-tale signs that you are working for a boss with an ego that casts a shadow?What out for the prominence of the boss's photo in the annual report; his (and it usually is a...

Boom markets and illicit trading always go together. So it's no surprise that there are signs of illicit trading ahead of company announcements, as revealed by The New York Times.The paper reports...

Former Enron chief Ken Lay might be dead but that hasn't stopped the University of missouri forging ahead with plans to fill a specially-endowed professorship in his name.The Kenneth L. Lay Chair...

Just had a chance to catch up with Jim Turley, the global chief of accounting giant Ernst & young.Here's what he had to say about Sarbanes-Oxley, compliance, remuneration for beancounters,...

The debate continues around whether SOX is driving companies away from the US market, and whether more are listing overseas because of SOX-related costs.The latest pitch comes from the conservative...

So Frank Quattrone, once the poster child of Wall Street greed, is back in business again. And no wonder he's been smiling the last few days!The guy who had been charged with hindering an...

Producer Mark Burnett has turned into the television business into an amoral, ethics-free zone.The producers of Survivor: Cook Islands are dividing competitors into four tribes: whites, blacks,...

Mistakes happen. The question is what do corporations do when stuff hits the fan. Do they investigate what went wrong, or do they become the corporate equivalent of the three wise monkeys with a...

Smaller public companies are bemoaning the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley but many closely held private companies are adopting it as a system of governance, reports The Wall Street Journal.The WSJ details...

Four out of five US companies have lost at least one laptop containing sensitive information over the past year. Indeed only one in 10 companies say there was no sensitive or confidential info on the...

Two years ago, Federal prosecutors landed a big fish when Frank Quattrone, a former star investment banker, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for hindering a government investigation into how...

Chief executive officers of more than 200 New York Stock Exchange-listed companies say Sarbanes-Oxley has created problems and opportunities. While smaller companies say Sarbanes-Oxley is killing...

A judge has relied on a legal technicality to set aside the March conviction in the first corporate fraud case to emerge from Iraq. The fraud has cost US taxpayers millions of dollars.What signal...

Earlier this week I blogged on how chief financial officers were focused on the money from the next job.One of the big reasons for that is Sarbanes-Oxley. Indeed, SOX is now the big money spinner for...

Former media tycoon Conrad Black has been hit with new charges in the US probe into the alleged looting of his corporate empire.This time, it's for tax evasion, according to the latest...

Psst, want to buy Ken Lay's Mercedes 600 SL?At $25,000, it's an absolute steal. How appropriate is that? You can pick it up eBay.Indeed, you can check out more of the Enron goodies,...