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regulators
by leon on June 30, 2006
More developments in the Citigroup-insider trading case in Sydney today. And reading the court document filed by the Australian corporate regulator today left me wondering whether the Australian Secur...
Read more of Citigroup in court
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boards of directors
by leon on June 29, 2006
Enron has shaken the corporate world to its foundations. The trial is over but directors and managers are still asking what lessons are to be drawn from the debacle. Chances are the questions will sti...
Read more of Directors: lessons from Enron
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corporate governance
by leon on June 29, 2006
The World Cup has highlighted attention on football's governing body FIFA runs itself and its president Sepp Blatter.Things have got so bad that FIFA has been forced to put out a press release den...
Read more of The governance of FIFA's fiefdom
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Compliance
by leon on June 27, 2006
Last month I blogged on how US banks, Internet-service providers and other companies were joining the telcos in providing confidential information about their customers to security agencies. I also ra...
Read more of Business of surveillance
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executive pay
by leon on June 27, 2006
The Securities and Exchange Commission will set down the ground rules this summer for the timing of companies to issue stock option grants, says SEC chairman Christopher Cox.Now, to my way of thinking...
Read more of Options scams: timing is everything
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corporate crime
by leon on June 26, 2006
The legal battle between US prosecutors and Conrad Black, the next big fish in the corporate prosecutions checklist, has escalated with prosecutors mocking Black and accusing him of telling lies about...
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SOX
by leon on June 26, 2006
Hard to go past last week's piece Trusting Bosses Not to Cheat by Floyd Norris in the New York Times. You can read all of it here.Seems that for all the fear and loathing about Sarbanes-Oxley, the...
Read more of Trusting bosses not to cheat: A SOX perspective
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executive pay
by leon on June 24, 2006
All the focus and bad press about some of the huge pay-outs to corporate execs has tarnished America's reputation, according to a report from HR consultancy Watson Wyatt Worldwide.Still, the study...
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regulators
by leon on June 23, 2006
British Airways faces a joint US-UK investigation into price fixing.The probe is on ticket prices, and particularly the fuel surcharges airlines have been adding to offset the rising cost of oil.Peter...
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corporate governance
by leon on June 23, 2006
Seems like brokers have discovered corporate governance.Companies with solid corporate governance deliver superior returns to investors, according to a Goldman Sachs JB Were report.The research relate...
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SOX
by leon on June 22, 2006
Hastily and clumsily drafted, Sarbanes-Oxley looks like being hit with the law of intended consequences, says former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt.Writing in the Financial Ti...
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Ethics
by leon on June 21, 2006
"Last fall, bentley college management professor Tony Buono taught a class on corporate scandals with colleagues pitching in from finance, accounting and even the philosophy department. The four ...
Read more of Can we teach ethics?
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shareholder activism
by leon on June 21, 2006
Plenty of focus on the new breed of shareholder this season.A record number of shareholder resolutions were on file for this year and they were mainly in three areas: global warming, toxins and politi...
Read more of The shareholders are revolting
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risk
by leon on June 20, 2006
In the post Sarbanes-Oxley era of corporate governance awareness, companies everywhere are beefing up their internal controls.Trouble is it's not doing anything to make them less vulnerable to fra...
Read more of Fraud risk
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corporate crime
by leon on June 20, 2006
Convicted fraudster Jeff Skilling has given his first extended interview, and the Enron conviction has done nothing to change his self-serving breathtaking arrogance."A lot better people than I a...
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risk
by leon on June 20, 2006
Interesting commentary now coming up on the challenging polemic on climate change An Inconvenient Truth starring the once and maybe future presidential candidate Al Gore.The film has profound implicat...
Read more of Gore: Apocalypse Now? Or When?
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Ethics
by leon on June 18, 2006
"I"LL BE BACK"Non-Terminator scientists are now working on a code of ethics for robots as they become more sophisticated in their handling of data, reports The Sunday Times.The Institut...
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regulators
by leon on June 17, 2006
Fascinating to follow the coverage of former New York Stock Exchange chief Richard Grasso invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions more than 150 times in relation to a deposition loo...
Read more of Grasso takes the Fifth, takes the Fifth...
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SOX
by leon on June 16, 2006
More evidence that accountants have been the big winners from Sarbanes-Oxley. At the expense of smaller companies.
Read more of Sarbanes-Oxley: a licence to print money for accountants
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corporate crime
by leon on June 16, 2006
And that makes it four!In a deal to get out of jail, EMI has agreed to pay $3.75 million to a music charity after being accused of paying (read: bribing) radio programmers to play specific songs by th...
Read more of Payola deja vu
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Ethics
by leon on June 15, 2006
Five years on, how has Enron shaped our views on corporate integrity?With all the media attention on corporate ethics scandals, US employee opinions on corporate integrity have jumped 11 per cent, acc...
Read more of The Enron Effect?
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SOX
by leon on June 15, 2006
On one level it confirms the bleeding obvious. On another, it raises more nagging questions about the SOX effect that leave us none the wiser. And it's unlikely to provide much ammunition for the ...
Read more of SOX squeeze on small business
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litigation
by leon on June 14, 2006
Regulators plan to crunch the backdating of options, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox told the Washington Post.And needless to say, the biggest scandal since Enron is also s...
Read more of The backdating game: the regulators and lawyers' picnic
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Accounting
by leon on June 13, 2006
Sarbanes-Oxley has been blamed for many things. Now we're told the pressure of Sarbox is forcing chief financial officers to look for other jobs and contributing to enormous churn at CFO job level...
Read more of Accountants: revolving doors, rock stars and gumshoe heroes.
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risk
by leon on June 13, 2006
How well prepared are businesses for climate change? How well prepared are insurers? It's going have a massive impact on the bottom line of insurers warns Lloyds of London in a new report Climate ...
Read more of Business and climate change
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Accounting
by leon on June 13, 2006
Last week, I interviewed Michael Crooch from the financial accounting Standards Board.During our conversation over coffee, he revealed how much Sarbanes-Oxley had transformed the accounting scene and ...
Read more of Accounting at the cross-roads
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Compliance
by leon on June 9, 2006
Here's a reason why annual reports are hard to read - the directors and managers might be trying to hide something.Those are the findings of a University of Michigan study.
Read more of Hiding behind annual reports
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Accounting
by leon on June 9, 2006
It's been called the land of the missing accountants. The sorry state of the accountancy profession in China is the Legacy of the Cultural Revolution's war on capitalism, reports the Financial...
Read more of Cultural Revolution and China's numbers trouble
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shareholder activism
by leon on June 8, 2006
With last year's $36 billion profit, Exxon Mobil was America's most valuable company. Until it got hammered in the market on Wednesday.But the company's problems don't end there.
Read more of Exxon Mobil: no switch on climate change
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risk
by leon on June 8, 2006
The trade in trade secrets continues unabated. According to David Hannah, assistant professor of management and organisation studies at simon Fraser University in Canada, a 2002 survey of more than 13...
Read more of Trade secrets: the threat within
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Ethics
by leon on June 8, 2006
First the good news. More than 8 out of 10 US companies have codes of ethics and 98 per cent agree that an ethics and compliance program is an important part of corporate governance.But a new report f...
Read more of Ethics: Talking the talk without doing
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Compliance
by leon on June 8, 2006
Think before you hit that "send" key.With emails now a compliance minefield, the big corporations in the US and Britain are now bringing in snoops to monitor and vet emails at the workplace.
Read more of Reading your email
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SOX
by leon on June 6, 2006
Check out the piece by Gary Weiss in Salon: Enron changed nothing.
Read more of Finger pointing: Enron changes nothing
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executive pay
by leon on June 5, 2006
The fallout from the options backdating scandal continues and the dogs are barking.The number of public companies under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission or federal prosecutors h...
Read more of Options scams: the regulators move in
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corporate crime
by leon on June 5, 2006
Here's a chance to make some money on Enron, or even get some of it back!
Read more of Lay and Skilling prison terms: place your bets
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Ethics
by leon on June 3, 2006
This morning, I spoke to Geraldine Doogue on ABC Radio National's Saturday Extra program about the Australian corporate regulator's insider-trading, conflict-of-interest lawsuit against Citigr...
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Ethics
by leon on June 2, 2006
Back in 2004, the UN Global Compact summit announced its Tenth Principle against corruption.So why are there still so many such cases?
Read more of Business against corruption
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corporate crime
by leon on June 1, 2006
Now that Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling look like spending the rest of their lives in the clink, the late-night jokes are flying thick and fast. A sampler:"Former Enron founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeffrey...
Read more of Enron punchlines
