Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on March 1, 2007
In the post-Enron era, most companies have adopted codes of ethics and codes of conduct. But what are they worth?Not much, according to European corporate compliance survey, reports The Lawyer.com. In...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on March 1, 2007
Last week, I looked at the issue of CFOs leaving companies in record numbers. Clearly the trend will escalate this year. More of the same, but worse.But what's driving this trend?CFOs are blaming ...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 28, 2007
Ken Lay is dead but his ghost lingers.Back in August last year, I looked at the curious case of the University of Missouri - Columbia dilemma about the Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics, created by th...
Filed in archive
risk
by leon on February 28, 2007
Climate change is a "tectonic" force as powerful as ageing and globalisation that will reshape markets and economies, according to a report from Lehman Bros.The report The Business of Climat...
Filed in archive
litigation
by leon on February 27, 2007
Get ready for a spate of age related law suits, warns this report.It's said to be an inevitable result of an ageing Workforce. Even those companies that don't think they discriminate might be ...
Filed in archive
boards of directors
by leon on February 27, 2007
While the Bush administration has gone for a hands-off approach to hedge funds and private equity, as reported last week in the International Herald Tribune, the Australian regulatory authority has co...
Filed in archive
Compliance
by leon on February 24, 2007
Costs of complying with the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley financial and accounting disclosure law are leveling off, but overall compliance costs are heading north, reports The Wall Street Journal.THE WSJ, citin...
Filed in archive
executive pay
by leon on February 23, 2007
Late last year, I talked about a study that looked at the knock-on effects of CEO pay.The study found that largesse of overpaying the boss flowed through the organisation. If the boss was overpaid, th...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on February 23, 2007
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world's biggest accounting firm, will have to get used to having next to no presence in the world's second biggest economy.PwC has announced it's closing down a...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 23, 2007
Politicians and Wall Street are howling that the US is losing its financial edge because of Sarbanes-Oxley. The law, we have been told, is causing the world's leading companies to shun Wall Street...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 23, 2007
Just weeks before he goes on trial in Chicago on charges that he and three other executives plundered $80 million out of Hollinger International, Conrad Black has decided to sue his British biographer...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on February 21, 2007
Back in January, I did a blog entry on the growing number of chief financial officers jumping ship.Looks like it could get worse this year, says professional services firm Tatum. Two out of three resp...
Filed in archive
strategy
by leon on February 21, 2007
Mergers have a failure rate that, according to some estimates, run as high as 85 per cent.No surprises then that less than nine years after the so-called "merger of equals", the $40 billion ...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 21, 2007
Before it went belly-up, Enron gained favorable treatments by lobbying Congress, federal and state governments, and various regulatory agencies. Little gifts that included the removal of price control...
Filed in archive
risk
by leon on February 21, 2007
Earlier this year, I did a blog entry on how gangs spreading malicious Trojan horse software were getting smarter. In the first big attack of 2007, they tried using tabloid headlines to trick users in...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 21, 2007
Hopes of more changes to Sarbanes-Oxley took a hit last week when Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) member Charles Niemeier came out with the warning that policy makers risk damaging t...
Filed in archive
executive pay
by leon on February 20, 2007
Bad news for the 170 companies now being investigated for backdating stock option - the tax man is coming to get you.The IRS is giving companies the opportunity to pay the 20 per cent tax plus interes...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 20, 2007
Last week Denver lawyer Frank Schuchat made the claim that Sarbanes-Oxley is manna for lawyers.He might have a point in that it's created plenty of work for them. But recent developments show that...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 17, 2007
Further confirmation that Sarbanes-Oxley is here to stay with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke telling the US Senate Banking Committee that Sarbanes-Oxley is "worthwhile to keep", accor...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 17, 2007
Not surprising but interesting nonetheless. A new study Who Blows The Whistle on Corporate Fraud shows the problem with Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires audit committees to establ...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 17, 2007
The "law of unintended consequences", discussed here, happens when one action results in an outcome that's completely unintended. No-one thought of it at the time.One of the best known e...
Filed in archive
risk
by leon on February 16, 2007
Hedge funds should open their books to regulator says former Citigroup chief executive officer Sandy Weill.In an interview in Der Spiegel, Weill says hedge funds should report to one regulator who ove...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on February 16, 2007
And you thought the world of accountants was quiet? Not the place for sex wars? Think again!According to a new survey, nine out of 10 male beancounters thinks what they like to call their career has b...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on February 15, 2007
At the end of last year, I did a blog entry on how more and more accounting jobs will be outsourced to India with estimates of 1.6 million US tax returns being prepared over there by 2011.Now we have ...
Filed in archive
corporate reputation
by leon on February 15, 2007
Every company knows why reputation is important, particularly in an economy where most of the market value of any business comes from intangible assets such as brand equity, goodwill and workforce exp...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 14, 2007
The Siemens scandal gets worse and worse. It's now broadened with reports that the company has identified individual incidents of apparent bribery at three other divisions as part of its investiga...
Filed in archive
executive pay
by leon on February 14, 2007
It's a sign of the times. Whole Foods Markets CEO John Mackey in a letter to his employees, republished in Fast Company, has announced that he is taking a massive pay cut - to just $1 a year."...
Filed in archive
executive pay
by leon on February 13, 2007
The smell over the Apple share backdating mess gets worse and worse.Now the Securities and Exchange Commission has widened its investigation into the matter after it emerged that Apple chief executive...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 13, 2007
Extraordinary corporate governance development in South Korea last week when Hyundai Automotive Group chairman Chung Mong-koo, was handed a surprise three-year sentence for high-profile corruption.But...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 11, 2007
Week of mixed fortunes for embattled ex-media tycoon Conrad Black. And on the balance of things, he has come off second best in the lead up to his multi-million fraud trial kicking off next month. Bla...
Filed in archive
markets
by leon on February 10, 2007
With private equity predators circling British supermarket chain Sainsbury and the monster buyout of Equity Office Properties, the biggest landlord in the United States outside of the US Government fi...
Filed in archive
executive pay
by leon on February 9, 2007
Towards the end of last year, I talked about the president's kid brother, Marvin, and stock option backdating. His little bro was a director of HCC Insurance Holdings at the time when it was backd...
Filed in archive
risk
by leon on February 9, 2007
The global economy is doing fine but industries are now confronting huge risks and issues. These include convergence of products and industries; the rising cost of capital; the end of low inflation; r...
Filed in archive
litigation
by leon on February 9, 2007
More developments this week in the Australian corporate regulator's lawsuit against Citigroup for insider trading and failing to manage the conflicts of interests involving its proprietary trading...
Filed in archive
markets
by leon on February 8, 2007
A week from hell for morgan stanley. First it gets fined $300,000 for failing to stop a trader from entering the wrong order for stocks. How wrong? Well, the order was for $10.8 billion of stocks, not...
Filed in archive
corporate reputation
by leon on February 8, 2007
Significant news that Microsoft has overtaken Johnson & Johnson and topped the Reputation Quotient survey. Johnson & Johnson has been at the top for seven years so it's no small feat.Even ...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 8, 2007
At the end of last year, I wrote about the struggles of The Coca Cola Company with diversity. It's a shameful history culminating several years ago in a close to $200 million lawsuit involving Afr...
Filed in archive
risk
by leon on February 7, 2007
Much attention at the end of last week on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report which predicted dire consequences of heat waves, cyclones, droughts, rising seas, if the world failed to ...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 7, 2007
One of my pet hates is the way language is used to hide the truth and keep people in the dark. I have talked about the corporate governance and ethics implications here and here.In his book Unspeak, j...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 6, 2007
Questions about moral behavior in business are now prominent against a background of obscenely inflated CEO pay packages, stock option backdating and other scandals. But how do you get a handle on mor...
Filed in archive
SOX
by leon on February 6, 2007
Nearly five years after he signed it into law (see photo) and even linking it to the September 11 attacks president bush last week came out with a so-called U-turn on Sarbanes-Oxley with the claim tha...
Filed in archive
corporate crime
by leon on February 6, 2007
Conrad Black faces 95 years in jail plus heavy fines for plundering money out of Hollinger International when he goes on trial next month.Now his lawyers say prosecutors should leave his wife's ov...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 6, 2007
So how many of the top business schools teach ethics?A study has found that only one in four of the world's top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the Financial Times in their 2006 Global MBA ran...
Filed in archive
strategy
by leon on February 5, 2007
The Netherlands has emerged as the new tax haven for corporations and rock stars, according to news reports.Apart from the Rolling Stones and U2 - Bono loves to preach but he hates paying tax - there&...
Filed in archive
Accounting
by leon on February 3, 2007
Accountants might be cleaning up big time from Sarbanes-Oxley and all the other corporate governance regimes around the world, but the ghost of Andersen lingers. Increased scrutiny and threats of liti...
Filed in archive
Ethics
by leon on February 3, 2007
ethiopia's coffee growers are creating problems for Starbucks by screening the documentary Black Gold.
Ethiopian growers have shown Black Gold to British MPs. One of the main targets is Seattle-b...
Filed in archive
markets
by leon on February 2, 2007
What does the annual World Economic Forum schmoozefest at Davos actually achieve?Precious little, says Bloomberg's Michael Lewis in his piece Davos Is for Wimps, Ninnies, Pointless Skeptics."...
Filed in archive
litigation
by leon on February 2, 2007
Qantas and six other airlines have been hit with a $200 million class action alleging they were part of a secret cartel that used fuel, security and war-risk surcharges artificially to inflate air fre...
