How big a role does the media play in keeping companies honest?According to some academics, it plays an important function. Professor Alexander Dyck from the University of Toronto presented a paper...

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox has announced a task force to make financial reporting easier for investors to understand.The committee, to be headed up by Robert C....

The world's biggest bank has been cleared of insider trading and conflicts of interest, but questions remain about the effectiveness of its so-called "Chinese walls".The Australian...

More evidence that it's not what you know but who you know. A new study shows that mutual fund managers invest more money in companies that are run by people with whom they went to college or...

Bear Stearns has gone into $1.6 billion worth of damage control with the near collapse of two of its hedge funds that had invested heavily in highly rated pieces of collateralized debt obligations,...

There is no doubt that Section 404, the section of Sarbanes-Oxley that requires documentation of compliance systems, has added significant costs, disproportionately hurting smaller companies. Since...

Most business schools struggle to teach ethics and social responsibility simply because they don't know how to go about it, according to this interview with London Business School's senior...

When it comes to intangible assets, the brand is one of the biggest items sitting on a company's balance sheet. For some, the brand name is absolutely priceless. Think Coca Cola, think GE.But...

Just finished reading Avner Offer's book The Challenge of Affluence and it offers some powerful insights into the paradox of markets and neoclassical economics. Markets are booming, people are...

So this is how the biggest criminal tax case in US history ends. Prosecutors are now urging urging US District Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss indictments against 12 ex KPMG executives following his...

Investment in sustainable energy is climbing on the back of concern over climate change, high oil prices and growing government support, according to a UN report.Global investment in sustainable...

It certainly does, according to a new University of Pittsburgh study.The study, Sarbanes-Oxley and Corporate Risk-Taking , found that many US companies starting hoarding cash instead of developing...

With new proxy rules requiring companies to reveal perks of $10,000 or more apiece - the old rules limited such disclosures to those valued above $50,000 - the revelations of who's getting what...

The BAE bribery scandal gets murkier and murkier with revelations that the arms merchant secretly paid nearly £250,000 ($US498,00) for a honeymoon for the daughter of Prince Bandar, the Saudi...

I have talked about worrying signs that insider trading is back with a vengeance here, here and here. Basically the combination of globalisation, cash sloshing into liquid, buoyant markets and...

Accounting giant Deloitte & Touche has been savaged by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board for shortcomings in its handling of clients' books.The PCAOB report makes interesting...

Just how powerful are the Big Four accounting firms? Extremely, or that seems to be the implication from memos written by KPMG lawyers when they were negotiating with prosecutors in 2005, telling...

The rich, as F Scott Fitzgerald said, are different from you and me.Just how different is revealed in a paper by Florida State University's James Ang, Mississippi State University's Gregory...