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Accounting
by leon on March 31, 2007
For decades dell was the market's darling. Since Michael Dell founded the company in his University of Texas dorm room in 1984, the company was loved by investors, analysts and business journalist...
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SOX
by leon on March 30, 2007
The mid-term elections turned Barney Frank into the most important and powerful legislators in the US. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, his views carry some weight.His perspectiv...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 30, 2007
The trial only started last week but punters are already placing bets on the fate of former newspaper magnate Conrad Black. The online gaming site BetUS.com is placing odds on what verdict Black will ...
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Ethics
by leon on March 29, 2007
On the past, I've written about delinquent communities where people have aided and abetting financial fraud. Auditors have helped cook the books, lawyers have provided advice on how to get around ...
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executive pay
by leon on March 28, 2007
The number of companies now implicated in the growing backdating scandal has hit 257, according to a report from Glass Lewis. That's more than double the number we've been reading about.You ca...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 28, 2007
Siemens' woes have gone from bad to worse with the arrest of board member Johannes Feldmayer, once regarded as the big contender for the top job there. The arrest of the man who would be CEO was m...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 27, 2007
Earlier this month, Saving Animals Across Borders came out with the announcement that it was flogging the desks of Enron chairman, the late Ken Lay, its chief executive Jeff Skilling (now doing 24 yea...
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Ethics
by leon on March 27, 2007
How much crude oil is Iraq actually exporting?That's anyone's guess because four years into the US occupation, the contractors in charge of calibrating, fixing and replacing the meters on oil ...
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litigation
by leon on March 27, 2007
First day in court for the Australian regulator's lawsuit against Citigroup alleging conflicts of interest and insider trading.The case has attracted investment banks around the world worried. Reg...
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Accounting
by leon on March 27, 2007
Late last year I did an entry looking at whether Sarbanes-Oxley was becoming the global standard with regulators around the world putting in similar, albeit not identical, regimes that echo the US leg...
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SOX
by leon on March 23, 2007
Last year I did a blog entry looking at the limitations of Sarbanes-Oxley when it comes to clawing back cash bonuses and stock awards from executives whose fraud or misdeeds had resulted in a disastro...
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executive pay
by leon on March 23, 2007
Here's the conundrum about backdating. Everyone knows it's cheating shareholders. That's why it's been compared to betting on yesterday's horse races.But unlike other types of frau...
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SOX
by leon on March 23, 2007
Is SOX unconstitutional?That's been the question raised by the Free Enterprise Fund. Last year it launched a constitutional challenge, led by Kenneth Starr of Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky fame, ...
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litigation
by leon on March 23, 2007
Some interesting new figures following the decision of the three-judge panel with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to block the $40 billion investor class action against Enron.The data suggests...
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Accounting
by leon on March 22, 2007
Auditors are supposed to watch out for the red flags when they combing through a company's books. Put simply, if you have a number of these flags, the auditor should start having serious doubts ab...
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litigation
by leon on March 22, 2007
Even by US standards, this piece of litigation is truly bizarre.Last week, all the attention was on reports that Viacom, Nickelodeon's parent company, had launched a $1 billion copyright infringem...
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risk
by leon on March 21, 2007
Early this year, I warned that there were signs that gangs spreading malware were getting smarter.The underground economy of data theft and leakage is booming and the perpetrators are one step of regu...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 20, 2007
Siemens has been forced to put more money into its joint venture with Nokia because of delays linked to bribery investigations and to cover any future damages claims, reports Forbes.This is very much ...
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regulators
by leon on March 20, 2007
Eleven years ago, Bill Clinton came out with the extraordinarily deceptive statement that "the era of big government is over".It was complete garbage then and his Republican successor went o...
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SOX
by leon on March 19, 2007
The career of Sarbox co-writer Michael Oxley continues.Earlier this month, I did a blog entry on how he was joining a law firm to help businessmen get around the law that bears his name.Then last week...
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Ethics
by leon on March 19, 2007
So US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales has resorted to the Sgt Schultz-Ken Lay defence about the extraordinary sackings of eight federal attorneys last December to make way for GOP hacks.It's har...
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executive pay
by leon on March 18, 2007
The sound you hear is Apple chief Steve Jobs digging himself out of the hole he has helped create by all those backdated options.First at one end, a Disney probe has confirmed there was some backdatin...
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SOX
by leon on March 16, 2007
With the jury selected in the Conrad Black trial, it's worth looking at why some corporate leaders go off the rails? Is it greed? Arrogance?Tom Walker's thought-provoking piece in the Atlanta ...
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SOX
by leon on March 16, 2007
The US Chamber of Commerce might have come out with its plan to water down Sarbanes-Oxley but Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox has told them they're dreaming.In his spee...
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corporate governance
by leon on March 16, 2007
After a hellish few months, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Mark Hurd and former chairwoman Patricia Dunn have had huge boosts.First, HP shareholders have come out with a huge vote of confidence in Hu...
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markets
by leon on March 16, 2007
That's the question the world is asking as the US stock market continues to twist and turn on the fulcrum of anxieties over the subprime market.And while it's by no means clear that the subpri...
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SOX
by leon on March 15, 2007
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!The slowly unfolding disaster of the subprime lending industry hits US stocks and markets worldwide, but the Bush administration and CEOs seem to think the real pr...
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Compliance
by leon on March 14, 2007
The other day I had a chat with Axentis president Ted Frank.Axentis is regarded as one of the leading providers of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) management solutions.We talked about why compli...
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risk
by leon on March 13, 2007
The debate about global warming seems to have moved on but the climate change contrarians are still getting some traction. Whether it's in Australia, with the Lavoisier Society, or Channel Four in...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 13, 2007
In a surprise development, it's been revealed that real estate tycoon Donald Trump is set to appear as a defence witness at Conrad Black's fraud and racketeering trial which kicks off this wee...
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litigation
by leon on March 13, 2007
Interesting development in the Australian corporate regulator's insider trading conflict of interest lawsuit against Citigroup (that's Citigroup's Sydney headquarters in the photo).The Aus...
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Accounting
by leon on March 12, 2007
Just this year, I have blogged on the high turnover of chief financial officers here, here and here.Companies pay a price for this, in more ways than one.A recent survey conducted by Duke University a...
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executive pay
by leon on March 12, 2007
There has been no shortage of celebrity CEOs. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner, and in her day, Carly Fiorina, just to name a few. But what impact does a celebrity CEO have on the shar...
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SOX
by leon on March 11, 2007
SOX co-writer Michael Oxley, who retired from Congress in January, is moving on. The architect of the law designed to stamp out corporate corruption is joining the law firm Baker Hostetter, according ...
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Ethics
by leon on March 9, 2007
The saga of the infamous rogue trader Nick Leeson never ceases to fascinate. Twelve years ago, Leeson's trades bankrupted Barings, the bank which had put up the money for the Louisiana Purchase an...
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executive pay
by leon on March 9, 2007
PricewaterhouseCoopers is forecasting that London is set to eclipse Paris and Chicago as the fourth biggest economy among world cities by 2020, as reported by the BBC, so it's no surprise that the...
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executive pay
by leon on March 9, 2007
In the middle of last year, The Wall Street Journal broke a disturbing story about companies cashing in on the market decline that came after 9/11 by issuing more stock options to their executives tha...
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corporate reputation
by leon on March 9, 2007
It hasn't been a great year for Starbucks.Last month, there were the revelations of the memo from chairman Howard Schultz suggesting the global coffee giant had lost its mojo.We've also seen t...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 8, 2007
Last week, I looked at Conrad Black's claims that there was a growing army of support for him and at a suspicious-looking and totally-over-the-top website backing the disgraced media mogul, even r...
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SOX
by leon on March 8, 2007
In early 2006, I did a blog entry looking at how Sarbanes-Oxley may have figured in the Plamegate affair.Simply put, the Act's broad definition of obstructing justice by destroying or concealing d...
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Accounting
by leon on March 7, 2007
Do the Big Four help their clients dodge tax by shifting their money into offshore havens?You bet, says a report from the British-based Tax Justice Network, a group of a group of accountants and econo...
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corporate governance
by leon on March 7, 2007
Hat tip to Ohio State University's Professor Dale Oesterle for alerting us in his Business Law Prof Blog to how Stanford University president John L Hennessy has made a killing from his extra-curr...
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risk
by leon on March 7, 2007
Regardless of whether you think global warming is true or a load of hog-wash, the markets are already taking it into account. Will investors pay less for companies poorly positioned to compete on a wa...
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executive pay
by leon on March 6, 2007
As if it wasn't bad enough, the debate about executive pay might soon switch into overdrive.American chief executives saw the value of their stock options more than triple last year thanks to a bo...
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corporate governance
by leon on March 6, 2007
Last week, I chewed the fat with Professor Paul Healy, the James R. Williston Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Professor Healy specialises in disclosure, corporate gove...
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Compliance
by leon on March 5, 2007
Google, the company with the informal corporate motto of "Don't be evil", has run into trouble with regulators about how it pays its taxes.Google has disclosed that the Securities and Ex...
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risk
by leon on March 3, 2007
Earlier this year I did a blog entry identifying cyber crime among the top 10 business risks for 2007 and beyond. Greater technological complexity and more cross-border transactions make it online fra...
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markets
by leon on March 3, 2007
Seems like only yesterday that I did an entry looking at the Ferraris, charter jets, multi-million dollar apartments and vacation homes that were being picked up last Christmas by Wall Street bankers....
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SOX
by leon on March 2, 2007
Senators john kerry and Olympia Snowe are pushing for regulators to give small US companies another year before they have to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, reports MarketWatch.Just another...
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corporate crime
by leon on March 2, 2007
Just two weeks out from his fraud and racketeering trial, Conrad Black reckons he will triumph and wreak revenge on his persecutors and sue everyone who defamed him, writes Patricia Best in the Globe ...
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risk
by leon on March 2, 2007
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke soothes international markets over the state of the US economy, reassuring investors that the US will not experience a recession this year.But the historical sign...
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risk
by leon on March 1, 2007
Here's the paradox. Global growth is solid, markets have been less volatile (notwithstanding this week's events) and investors have been cleaning up. Yet risk remains a priority for companies....
