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corporate crime
by leon on December 31, 2006
In his latest filing, disgraced former media mogul Conrad Black has expressed concern about the way the receivers at Ravelston, which has a controlling stake in Hollinger International, and Hollinger&...
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risk
by leon on December 30, 2006
What are the top scams of 2006?The lists are coming in from everywhere.One of the best comes from ConsumerAffairs.com. It's definitely one of the best because other sites and bloggers have plagiar...
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markets
by leon on December 29, 2006
private equity firms have joined forces to create a lobby group.The press release says the new Private Equity Council will educate policy-makers about the groups.Yeah right. That's code for headin...
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executive pay
by leon on December 28, 2006
As if it wasn't bad enough reading about the record Christmas bonuses to Wall Street bosses and excessive lifestyles and spending habits of traders and bankers.Last Friday, the Securities and Exch...
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corporate reputation
by leon on December 28, 2006
Federal prosecutors might have ammunition for legal action against Apple with a probe into whether Apple forged documents to enrich executives, reports The Recorder on the Law.com site.For the benefit...
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SOX
by leon on December 27, 2006
Several weeks ago, I warned that the overhaul of Sarbanes-Oxley was not going to please everyone and that the SOX-bashers would say the changes had not gone far enough and that they amounted to little...
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Ethics
by leon on December 27, 2006
Nick Leeson's latest ravings are nothing short of extraordinary.In February 1995, Leeson single-handedly bankrupted the bank that financed the Napoleonic Wars, the Louisiana Purchase and the Erie ...
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litigation
by leon on December 26, 2006
The problems confronting Australian wheat export agency AWB which was slated last month by an Australian Government inquiry for slinging bribes to Saddam Hussein continue.Now, we have news that the Ir...
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executive pay
by leon on December 26, 2006
Ferraris, charter jets, multi-million dollar apartments and vacation homes...just some of the goodies picked up with the luxury spending this Christmas on Wall Street, reports Jenny Anderson at the Ne...
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corporate governance
by leon on December 25, 2006
What a year it's been! The stories have just kept coming, and certainly kept me busy here. Scandals and litigation have all been part of the mix covered by Sox First this year. And Governments and...
Read more of Top 10 business shenanigans for 2006
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corporate crime
by leon on December 24, 2006
Conrad Black's self-delusion gets more bizarre by the day.Just months before his fraud, racketeering and tax evasion trial is about to begin in Chicago, disgraced former media mogul Black is now g...
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executive pay
by leon on December 22, 2006
Last weekend, the news was buzzing that John Mack, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, was given a $40m Christmas bonus, the biggest ever awarded to a Wall Street boss.True, the announcement was ma...
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Ethics
by leon on December 21, 2006
Interesting piece in Corporate Counsel on the role of HP's ex-general counsel Ann Baskins in the pretexting scandal.Baskins, as the piece points out, was in the best position to recognize the prob...
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Accounting
by leon on December 21, 2006
With the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board being dragged into court today to defend its constitutionality, it's time to look at its proposals this week to scrap the audit rule targeted by ...
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Compliance
by leon on December 20, 2006
A definite pattern has emerged with what appears to be morgan stanley's cavalier attitude to emails.It looks like the brokerage might have to have to make payments to hundreds of investors in arbi...
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litigation
by leon on December 20, 2006
Significant proceedings in the Federal Court in Sydney today with the Australian corporate regulator filing its amended statement of claim in its insider trading and failure to manage conflicts of int...
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executive pay
by leon on December 19, 2006
Last month, I did blog entry on the way hundreds of lucky US company bosses inflated their pay by as much as 10 per cent by secretly backdating share options, with the options being granted at the poi...
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litigation
by leon on December 19, 2006
As expected, Fannie Mae has turned into litigation city with the regulators now suing the mortgage giant's former leaders over their role in the multibillion dollar accounting scandal at the gover...
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regulators
by leon on December 19, 2006
If accountants think the regulators here are tough, spare a thought for Liu Yibing who has been sentenced to death in China for running a scam.Actually, it's all part of China's crackdown on t...
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SOX
by leon on December 19, 2006
Totally unconstitutional says prosecutor Kenneth Starr in The Wall Street Journal.Starr, who lead the charge on Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, is now heading up the constitutional challenge to the Pu...
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executive pay
by leon on December 17, 2006
The boom in private equity is creating a new scam in executive pay. In many of these deals, bosses sell out to private equity and pick up millions in so-called change of control provisions, and then c...
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corporate crime
by leon on December 16, 2006
The scandal surrounding the slush funds set up by German conglomerate Siemens, which makes everything from light bulbs to high speed trains, has just gone from bad to worse with the arrest of a top ex...
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Accounting
by leon on December 16, 2006
Another one bites the dust.The whining from auditors about getting liability caps is likely to get louder with news that troubled US mortgage finance company Fannie Mae is suing former auditor KPMG fo...
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SOX
by leon on December 15, 2006
As expected the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday came out with its blueprint to ease financial-control rules and red tape for smaller public companies.Along the way, the SEC has also propo...
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corporate crime
by leon on December 14, 2006
Here is the view from Jeff Skilling's four-bunk cell at the Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, which lies south of Minneapolis. The undated photo, provided by the US Department of Correct...
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corporate crime
by leon on December 14, 2006
It wasn't that long ago that Conrad Black, who next year stands trial for fraud and plundering Hollinger International, was claiming that he wasn't a crook but a freedom fighter.His self-delus...
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Ethics
by leon on December 13, 2006
When things go wrong, the usual response from politicians is to bring in laws to restore public trust.Sarbanes-Oxley is probably the most high-profile example of that, but it happens in other countrie...
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corporate governance
by leon on December 12, 2006
Investors' gripes in Japan are getting louder. With mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc under a cloud over negligence on money laundering and with Japanese regulators this month introducing new rul...
Read more of Japan's style of corporate governance: shareholders take a back seat
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Ethics
by leon on December 12, 2006
Now that Hewlett-Packard has settled with the state of California for $14.5 million, the question is what happens now? Is that an end to the pretexting scandal? Or are there other issues lurking?As pa...
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corporate crime
by leon on December 11, 2006
The big story coming out of Europe over the last fortnight has been the corruption scandal inside the German industrial conglomerate Siemens where a slush funds were used to pay hundreds of millions o...
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Ethics
by leon on December 10, 2006
I have explored in this blog entry how the bad governance of football's governing body, FIFA, has resulted in such scandals as match fixing and funds that go missing.Now a US District Judge Lorett...
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markets
by leon on December 9, 2006
Regulators might be moving to crack down on the illegal trade of market-moving information from companies, but hedge funds are tapping a rich source of inside tips and predictions: politicians and the...
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SOX
by leon on December 9, 2006
The moves to try and fix Sarbanes Oxley are gathering pace with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board saying it will meet on December 19 to consider a revised auditing standard on internal con...
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markets
by leon on December 8, 2006
One of the more extraordinary stories this year. It wasn't that long ago that the Seminole tribe of Florida was struggling in a cycle of chronic poverty and underemployment.Now they have bought th...
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corporate reputation
by leon on December 8, 2006
Who said innovative companies are the most environmentally sound?Apple has been ranked stone motherless last by greenpeace. The activist group reckons that Apple uses toxic chemicals, does a bad job o...
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Accounting
by leon on December 7, 2006
Offshoring accounting work to India is taking off with a new report showing that 1.6 million US tax returns will be prepared from India by 2011.It's a large figure but only a fraction of what'...
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markets
by leon on December 6, 2006
Early this year, The Coca Cola Company announced that executive Muhtar Kent would head up Coke's international operations.Since then, Kent has been tipped to be Coke's next Chief operating off...
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corporate crime
by leon on December 6, 2006
Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson who wrote the memo the memo that underpinned the policy used to prosecute scandal-plagued corporations has conceded the prosecutors have gone too far and ...
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Ethics
by leon on December 5, 2006
The Coca Cola Company has made significant improvements in the area of diversity, but it still has some way to go after being told by a federal judge to keep its eye on the ball, reports BusinessWeek....
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Ethics
by leon on December 5, 2006
Some surprises in the latest breakdown of the world's best corporate citizens.The list prepared by the Reputation Institute, which based its findings of a survey 30,000 citizens around the world, ...
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regulators
by leon on December 2, 2006
This week, I interviewed Jeremy Cooper, the deputy chairman of the Australian corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.We covered many topics, from private equity and ...
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litigation
by leon on December 2, 2006
Hewlett-Packard's legal woes continue with shareholders now suing directors and executives for insider trading.Basically, the lawsuit accuses the company's honchos, including CEO Mark Hurd, of...
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SOX
by leon on December 1, 2006
After plenty of pre-announcements, strategic leaks and commentary, the move to rewrite Sarbanes-Oxley keeps gaining momentum with the release of the Hank Paulson-backed Interim Report of the Committee...
Read more of Rewriting SOX
