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corporate governance
by leon on June 29, 2007
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 at...
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Accounting
by leon on June 28, 2007
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. Pozen,...
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litigation
by leon on June 28, 2007
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 corpo...
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markets
by leon on June 27, 2007
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 grad...
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markets
by leon on June 27, 2007
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, or...
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SOX
by leon on June 27, 2007
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 we...
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Ethics
by leon on June 27, 2007
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 fel...
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strategy
by leon on June 26, 2007
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 many...
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markets
by leon on June 25, 2007
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 wea...
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Accounting
by leon on June 25, 2007
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 con...
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markets
by leon on June 24, 2007
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 energ...
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SOX
by leon on June 22, 2007
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 ne...
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executive pay
by leon on June 22, 2007
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 $50,000 - the revelations of who's getting what fr...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 22, 2007
The BAE bribery scandal gets murkier and murkier with revelations that the arms merchant secretly paid nearly £250,000 ($US498,00) for a honeymoon for the daughter of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian ...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 21, 2007
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 technol...
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Accounting
by leon on June 20, 2007
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 readi...
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Accounting
by leon on June 20, 2007
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 them...
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executive pay
by leon on June 19, 2007
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 Na...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 19, 2007
There is nothing that gets me more riled than when I read commentators describing fraud and various corporate shenanigans as "victimless crimes".There are real victims. Fraud and corporate c...
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risk
by leon on June 19, 2007
In his seminal text Experiences in Groups, the late psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion said healthy groups shared the following characteristics:1. A common purpose, either in overcoming an enemy or pursuing a...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 18, 2007
We know all about high-level perpetrators of of securities frauds. Plenty of attention has been placed on the Ken Lays of this world.But little attention has been given to the scam-meisters who sell b...
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strategy
by leon on June 18, 2007
All over the world, governments are looking at nuclear energy as the answer to climate change.But nuclear power is the most contentious and emotive of all methods of energy production. You have the lo...
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SOX
by leon on June 15, 2007
Sarbanes-Oxley might have made boards larger and more independent but it's also made them more expensive.A University of Georgia study, which drew on data of more than 8000 firms of various sizes ...
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litigation
by leon on June 15, 2007
In an extraordinary decision, the President has delivered a gift to Wall Street fat cats by refusing to back investors in a case that will affect the victims who had been defrauded by parties aiding a...
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Sponsored Blog
by Creative Weblogging on June 15, 2007
Current trends in search technology and how these can be tapped to help the growth of online advertising, will be discussed during the Red Herring East Technology Event to be held on June 26-28, 2007 ...
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Ethics
by leon on June 14, 2007
Employees say they're more likely to stay in organisations with strong ethical cultures than those that are lacking, according to new research.As far as revelations go, it's hardly earth shatt...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 14, 2007
The Blair Government was kidding itself a few months ago when thought it would put a lid on the fallout from BAE's shenanigans.The UK Government had pulled the corruption probe into BAE's mass...
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SOX
by leon on June 13, 2007
Nearly five years ago, Congress rushed through the sarbanes-oxley legislation. The aim was to clamp down on fraud and restore investor confidence.Now new figures show how badly it failed.Despite tough...
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corporate crime
by leon on June 13, 2007
With Conrad Black's trial drawing to a close, and the former media mogul refusing to testify , questions are now arising whether the guy will get convicted. Whatever his excesses, some are casting...
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risk
by leon on June 13, 2007
In China, more than 400,000 people die every year as a result of air pollution, an estimated 190 million people drink water so contaminated that it makes them sick and 40 per cent of its land mass is ...
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Compliance
by leon on June 13, 2007
Company reports might be misleading investors by distorting their true market value, according to a new study.The study, from London's Cass Business School, found that conventional measures failed...
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markets
by leon on June 12, 2007
Here's a warning to America. Within the next eight years, London will overtake New York as the world's financial hub, and it will rival Silicon Valley as a technology centre.And it's got n...
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SOX
by leon on June 12, 2007
If we needed any further evidence that Sarbanes-Oxley was of not much use to whistleblowers, it came last week when the first person to win whistleblower protection under SOX ended up losing his case....
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Accounting
by leon on June 10, 2007
The board that polices auditors has put the corporate world on notice that it's monitoring how companies and beancounters make the transition to Enron-style "fair value" accounting.The n...
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Ethics
by leon on June 8, 2007
I have spent more years than I care to remember examining the approaches different companies all over the world take to corporate social responsibility (CSR). And I have come to the view that most cor...
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boards of directors
by leon on June 8, 2007
Earlier this year, I looked at how an Australian regulatory authority, the Takeovers Panel, was moving to address conflicts of interest that occur in private equity takeovers where managers and boards...
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Ethics
by leon on June 7, 2007
Howard Gardner is best known for his pioneering work on multiple intelligences, a framework that basically sets out our strengths and weaknesses across many areas.Now he has started used that framewor...
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risk
by leon on June 7, 2007
Climate change is shaping up as a nightmare liability issue for companies, insurers and directors.Consider these scenarios: a utility has a power outage caused by a climate change-related extreme weat...
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SOX
by leon on June 6, 2007
The Securities and Exchange Commission looks like holding firm to its December 15 deadline for small public companies to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, reports the Los Angeles Times.More r...
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Ethics
by leon on June 6, 2007
European employees agree that whistleblower rights should be protected. But 19 per cent of Eastern Europeans and one out of 10 Western European employees believe their employers would not protect them...
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Ethics
by leon on June 5, 2007
Up until now, a lot of the focus about corporate responsibility has been that it's good for profits. The triple bottom line, we have been told, is good building sustainable returns.But these claim...
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SOX
by leon on June 5, 2007
In the past. I have looked at the shortcomings of Sarbanes-Oxley in relation to whistleblowers here and hereA recent paper from Richard Moberly sheds light on why the Act does not deliver.The paper, U...
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executive pay
by leon on June 5, 2007
Interesting findings from Mercer Human Resource Consulting which reveals that the number of CEOs receiving option grants is slipping and there has been a decrease in those receiving restricted stock g...
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risk
by leon on June 5, 2007
The impact of climate change on the movement of vast populations, the creation of global warming refugees, has been missing from the public debate on the single biggest issue facing governments, busin...
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Ethics
by leon on June 3, 2007
During the week, I looked at reality TV's new ethical low when producers of a Dutch show announced they would screen a terminally ill woman selecting one of three patients to receive her kidneys. ...
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risk
by leon on June 2, 2007
Interesting paper from economics professor Wing Thye Woo on whether China's explosive growth is sustainable.The question he raises: is China headed for a car crash? Could we see a correction that ...
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Compliance
by leon on June 1, 2007
In the past, I have looked at how the big corporations in the US and Britain have brought in snoops to check emails in the workplace.Now it seems they've been beaten to the punch.One in three IT w...
