Enron: Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling's day in court arrives

Filed in archive corporate crime by leon on January 30, 2006

All eyes are on Houston as the Enron trial begins. Ken Lay has been busy, with a website that lists his awards and achievements and introduces us to his legal team, And for those of us who care, he ev...

The Future of Audit: Risk and uncertainty ahead

Filed in archive Accounting by leon on January 30, 2006

The US Chamber of Commerce has a new report on the future of auditing. Auditing: A Profession At Risk makes grim reading. It outlines the problems, offers some solutions, but it's quite clear from...

SOX for Government

Filed in archive Ethics by leon on January 30, 2006

With Republicans now calling on the White House to come clean on information surrounding disgraced influence peddler Jack Abramoff, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt Jr says it's time to introduce...

Sarbanes-Oxley vs. Press Freedom?

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 27, 2006

What role did Sarbanes-Oxley have in the Plamegate affair? Plenty, according to an interesting piece in Reason. Time surrendered the magazine's notes to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald after Fitzger...

Risky business

Filed in archive by leon on January 25, 2006

The mishandling of the situation in New Orleans after Katrina and the inability of authorities to deal with the problem highlights the difficulties organisations have with risk analysis. Part of the p...

SOX 404: A Stack of Needles

Filed in archive Compliance by leon on January 24, 2006

Designing good systems for internal controls under Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 has been compared to "finding a needle in a stack of needles".Hugh Taylor, vice president of marketing at SOA So...

Ethics exams

Filed in archive Ethics by leon on January 21, 2006

If ethics is about character, can you teach people to be ethical? If people are determined to get what they want by bending the rules, can you screen them by giving them tests?Some argue that corporat...

Codes of Conduct

Filed in archive Ethics by leon on January 19, 2006

Interesting piece on codes of conduct in the December edition of the Harvard Business Review. The researchers identified differences between codes representing multiple sectors of society and business...

Money for auditors

Filed in archive Accounting by leon on January 17, 2006

Official figures show that Sarbanes-Oxley and international accounting standards have boosted audit revenues. Audit fees in Britain surged 15 percent in 2005, compared with 2 percent in 2004. And the ...

Sarbanes-Oxley: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 11, 2006

Here's a fascinating panel discussion in on the theme: Sarbanes-Oxley: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly".In the discussion, Morrison & Foerster partner Jordan Eth describes it as the "new...

A SOX-led bombardment of litigation?

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 9, 2006

Are we headed for a blow-out in securities class-actions? Watch out for the warning signs, says the Wall Street Journal . Don't be be fooled by the decline in securities actions. The list might be...

What is the most challenging SOX issue: The CEO roundtable

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 7, 2006

Same problem, different perspectives. Some fascinating insights come through in these very diverse points of view. Some focus on the IT management SIDE, some on the human side of things and others on ...

Accountants at the crossroads

Filed in archive Accounting by leon on January 6, 2006

The December edition of The CPA Journal has an interesting piece by former General Motors general auditor Eugene H. Flegm on the accounting profession at the crossroads.Flegm says some hard decisions ...

Proxy season peace pipes

Filed in archive shareholder activism by leon on January 6, 2006

Interesting data from the 2005 proxy season has raised suggestions that boards of directors and activists brought out the peace pipes.The figures however suggest that something far more important is a...

I think Sarbanes-Oxley is a terrible law - Milton Friedman on SOX.

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 6, 2006

Of all the economists, Milton Friedman has been the one who has provided the conservative movement against activist governments with intellectual grunt. The Nobel Laureate is regarded as one of the mo...

Executive pay battleground

Filed in archive executive pay by leon on January 5, 2006

With Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox last month outlining plans to make companies come clean on executive compensation, pay for bosses is shaping up as the next big fight.I...

Red Card for McAfee: SEC's new guidelines for fining public companies.

Filed in archive regulators by leon on January 5, 2006

Software maker and bug buster McAfee has been pinged $50 million for its accounting shenanigans in fiscal 2000 which resulted in a $120 million shortfall and lawsuits over its revenue recognition poli...

Stretching the SOX dollar: is it value for money?

Filed in archive SOX by leon on January 4, 2006

With the latest figures from AMR Research showing that firms this year will spend $6 billion complying with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, the question is whether the expensive laws and regulations intr...

Accountants: cleaning up the reputation

Filed in archive Accounting by leon on January 3, 2006

Has the accounting profession recovered from scandals and financial shenanigans. The opinions are mixed and it's not quite a clean bill of health, according to some of the profession's thought...

Crystal ball gazing: a big year ahead for compliance and regulations.

Filed in archive Compliance by leon on January 2, 2006

Expect the compliance treadmill is about to slow down? Think again. '06 and '07 are set to be big years for monitoring, record keeping and re-engineering of processes across businesses. Privac...