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markets
by leon on July 31, 2007
With Rupert Murdoch's bid for Dow Jones on a knife-edge , my colleague Matthew Ricketson sets out the pros and cons of the prospective takeover here.And the negatives are worrying. This takeover i...
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executive pay
by leon on July 31, 2007
French executives are the fattest cats in Europe.A poll in Fortune found that French executives took 10 of the 20 top spots, including first and second place.Top of the heap was Carlos Ghosn, CEO of F...
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Accounting
by leon on July 30, 2007
KPMG has been hauled over the coals by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for some pretty basic deficiencies. Read through the PCAOB report , and you realize we are talking Accounting 101.T...
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markets
by leon on July 30, 2007
Following another dismal day on Wall Street at the end of last week, amid concern that tightening credit conditions may lead to a slowdown in housing activity, the market is a state of heightened unce...
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Ethics
by leon on July 27, 2007
In the past, I have looked at how most codes of ethics aren't worth the paper they're written on.Still, codes of ethics are important because they outline the values and principles management ...
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risk
by leon on July 27, 2007
Next time you get an email from the US Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission or Internal Revenue Service, hit delete.Identity thieves have sent out thousands of bogus emails in an attempt to tr...
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boards of directors
by leon on July 26, 2007
I have talked about climate change liability risks for company directors here and here. Climate change has all the potential of turning into a major corporate governance issue.Jeffrey Smith and Matthe...
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risk
by leon on July 25, 2007
As a business book junkie, I have pored through countless texts that claim to reveal the blueprint for lasting success, the path from good to great, and various formulae for a fail-safe strategy that ...
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risk
by leon on July 25, 2007
An interesting paper from Australian economist John Quiggin which sends an explosive message to politicians and business all over the world.Quiggin's arguments suggest that the force now influenci...
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markets
by leon on July 25, 2007
Fund managers have ridden the coat-tails of the baby boomers, ignoring the next generation of clients and that could create enormous problems for the financial services industry, according to a new re...
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Ethics
by leon on July 24, 2007
The amount of spoiling around the last book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series, released last week, has raised a number of important questions about ethics. I write this as someone who isn'...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 24, 2007
Nearly five years after the most stringent anti-fraud and corporate governance measures were introduced in the US, and fraud is still strong.According to a new study from the Deloitte Forensic Center,...
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regulators
by leon on July 24, 2007
Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, it was so stupid and flawed that the time must have been 2am!Pilloried by congressmen and the banking industry, the Securities and Exchange has ...
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Accounting
by leon on July 20, 2007
In this age of skills shortages, it's interesting to read how the Big Four are going about managing, keeping and attracting their talent. The big accounting firms could also teach other companies ...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 20, 2007
Conrad Black has been released on bail but barred from leaving the United States.Still, the arguments continue about Black's financial wherewithal with prosecutors claiming Black has repeatedly li...
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markets
by leon on July 19, 2007
The market seems to be bracing itself for the next shoe to drop with the two Bear Stearns hedge funds which had bet big on subprime mortgage sector now virtually worthless. The $1.6 billion bailout pu...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 19, 2007
The latest Transparency International Progress Report on OECD Convention Enforcement suggests that the battle against bribery and corruption has run into a brick wall.The report blames it on a lack of...
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litigation
by leon on July 18, 2007
The fallout from the KPMG tax shelter case continues.Earlier this week, we saw Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissing criminal charges against 13 former partners of accounting giant KPMG. The judge's decis...
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corporate reputation
by leon on July 18, 2007
For business, first the good news. People trust business more than government, according to the latest Edelman Trust barometer. The global figures show that trust in business is on the up and trust in...
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SOX
by leon on July 18, 2007
At the beginning of the month, I did a blog entry looking at the fifth anniversary of Sarbanes-Oxley.To mark the occasion, CFO Europe has released a survey showing that three out of four US CFOs and s...
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Ethics
by leon on July 18, 2007
It's taken some time coming but Google has announced it's extending its Google Apps online software suite for companies and organizations to non-profits.The announcement from the blog of Googl...
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regulators
by leon on July 17, 2007
The US administration's paranoid obsession with terrorism has gone too far with the Securities and Exchange Commission's link on state sponsors of terrorism. It's a knee-jerk reaction that...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 17, 2007
Conrad Black insists last week's verdict was just an aberration and that he will win ("The prosecutors lost most of their case and we move on to the Court of Appeals and expect to dispose of ...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 14, 2007
So Conrad Black has been convicted as a fraudster. For a neat summary of how the media responded to the verdict, go to Macleans.Now attention turns to the appeal and what he's likely to get. One t...
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corporate governance
by leon on July 14, 2007
When BusinessWeek and Forbes name their lists of "Best Managers" or "Best Performing CEOs", it could be the kiss of death. Not only for the CEO but the company and investors. That ...
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risk
by leon on July 14, 2007
Earlier this year, I did a blog entry looking at the problems of forecasting the future. Forecasting, I said, was not so much a matter of predicting the future. It was more about exploring patterns of...
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risk
by leon on July 12, 2007
Companies might be skilled at handling credit, market and financial risk, but they are hopeless when dealing with emerging risk issues of climate change, holding on to talent, and terrorism, according...
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corporate governance
by leon on July 12, 2007
Last month, the Australian Council of Super Investors, which represents the country's big industry super funds, had an interesting conference on corporate governance. One their guests, Stuart Gran...
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litigation
by leon on July 11, 2007
The number of securities class actions is down significantly, falling to well below average, according to a study by legal research firm Cornerstone Research and Stanford University Law School.So why ...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 11, 2007
Tense hours ahead for Conrad Black as he flips a bird at the media in the lead-up to the jury decision as whether he gets sent to jail for the rest of his life, or walks.The jury has been deadlocked b...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 11, 2007
Crime doesn't pay. Well, for some. Contrary to claims that managers lie, cheat, cook the books and get away with it, a new study shows that individual perpetrators suffer huge consequences. Not al...
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corporate governance
by leon on July 11, 2007
At the beginning of this month, I raised the question of whether the private equity party is over. But the events of the past week have shown me that the reports of private equity's death are exag...
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strategy
by leon on July 10, 2007
When organizations go bad, they usually succumb to one of six pathologies.1. Myopic organizations: These are the kinds of places where the leadership is in the grip of a protective stupidity, where th...
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markets
by leon on July 9, 2007
The ghost of Enron lives on.It will be there when a US Senate sub-committee examines whether
electronic energy exchanges should be subject to stricter rules. The problem goes back to 1993 when Enron ...
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Ethics
by leon on July 8, 2007
A division of French cosmetic giant L'Oreal has been fined €30,000 ($US41,000) and one of its officers given a suspended three months prison sentence for systematic racial bias.L'Oreal unit Ga...
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SOX
by leon on July 6, 2007
In recent months, I have looked at how Sarbanes-Oxley's co-writer Michael Oxley has joined a law firm to help companies get around Sarbox, taken on another paid gig at Nasdaq and blamed the proble...
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Accounting
by leon on July 6, 2007
Earlier this week, I did a blog entry looking at allegations from a former Halliburton employee that the world's second-largest oilfield-services company had artificially inflated its revenues thr...
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risk
by leon on July 6, 2007
Lawyers are cashing in on climate change. Law firms around the US are getting ready for an explosion of work. Attorneys expect a bonanza of climate-related work tied to government regulation, lawsuits...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 5, 2007
What are the main characteristics of companies that engage in fraud? What are the tell-tale signs?A new study reveals that price-earnings ratios and market-to-book ratios are unusually high prior to t...
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Accounting
by leon on July 4, 2007
New allegations about Halliburton. The oil-field-services giant has been accused of deliberately distorting its accounts through false accounting. Potentially, that could land the company in serious t...
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corporate crime
by leon on July 4, 2007
Siemens' efforts to extricate itself from this bribery mess is going nowhere fast.Daniel Noa, the man who was put in charge of investigating the scandal only six months ago has quit, after running...
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SOX
by leon on July 4, 2007
With Enron and WorldCom fading from memory and their perpetrators behind bars, the members of the Securities and Exchange Commission are being accused of tilting toward business interests and away fro...
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markets
by leon on July 3, 2007
1.When you choose a financial advisor, look at the scalp. If there are any gray hairs, it means they've been around long enough to see financial cycles. If you're really lucky, they've alr...
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Accounting
by leon on July 2, 2007
Earlier this year, I looked at a report showing that companies couldn't get their heads around important non-financial metrics like reputation risk, global competition, and increased scrutiny from...
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SOX
by leon on July 2, 2007
It's party time. July marks the fifth anniversary of the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley and preparations are underway to mark the occasion.The Center for Audit Quality has announced it's holding a ...
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markets
by leon on July 1, 2007
The private equity party seems to be coming to an end, leaving the buyout firms to take the money and run. The fallout from the subprime mortgage defaults are making the banks nervous and investors ar...
