The latest figures from AMR Research show that companies will spend $6 billion on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance in 2006. That's pretty pretty much in line with what was spent last year. Still, nobody...

Jack Ciesielski's Analyst's Accounting Observer (AAO) blog draws our attention to a piece in the Wall Street Journal about a "liability cap" agreement between Sun Microsystems and...

Suddenly big business wants to get close to shareholders. A fight has broken out with the Business Roundtable, which represents big time CEOs, calling on the Securities & Exchange Commission to...

Minnesota's Corporate Directors Academy, a project of the Caux Round Table and the Hendrickson Institute for Ethical Leadership at St. Mary's University of Minnesota, has started producing...

Accused of working in a scheme designed to loot more than $80 million from Chicago-based publishing company Hollinger, Conrad Black has called the charges a "massive smear job" and has...

Why is a corporation like a stray cat? Both need owners, according to corporate governance champion Bob Monks. In this Business Ethics magazine interview, Monks says institutions are not doing enough...

The Government has walked away from its star case on corporate malfeasance by closing the books on accounting firm Arthur Andersen and deciding not to retry the case. "Why would you charge a...

Britain's Financial Services Authority has warned that the dominance of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, and the problems regulating them, could present problems for market confidence. In...

A former board member of Enron, Raymond Troubh has positioned himself as a champion of corporate governance reform. He wants a radical overhaul of the way boards operate. His proposals include closer...

The ethics industry has been booming ever since the US Sentencing Commission ruled that one of the things courts had to take into consideration when bringing bad companies to book was whether they...

The backlash against those appalling golden parachute payments for executives is gathering momentum. The DealLawyers blog alerts us to those moves in Congress forcing companies to ask their owners...

Not a great month for accountants. First KPMG's woes continued with a senior US tax official blasting the firm for putting "profits over professionalism" with the abusive tax shelters...

Bosses of basketcase companies are being thrown in the slammer but where do the directors of these bad businesses go to? An analysis of companies like Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Global Crossing,...

Red tape or a chance to drill deep and find opportunities? That's the choice thrown up by Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley which holds managers responsibile for internal controls and requires...

A new study suggests bosses and boards have over-reacted to the parade of corporate scandals. Many it seems are forgetting about strategy. The study classifies boards into two categories:...

The costs of SOX compliance. Some businesses still say they are burning money. In the beginning, there was talk of it being an initial one-off cost, but the latest from AMR Research says compliance...

One of the most striking features in corporate scandals in recent years is the role of email. When Morgan Stanley was ordered earlier this year to pay $1.45 billion to billionaire financier Ronald...

Women coming into the workforce now tend to be better educated than men. They are also better at multi-tasking and, more often than not, are the ones who make all the major consumer decisions for...

How many company directors are babes in the wood? Naive passengers who don't ask the tough questions. The latest edition of Boardroom INSIDER gives some tips on what to look out for on a...

Like it or not, Sarbanes-Oxley is here to stay and greater scrutiny means that demands for transparency and appropriate corporate governance are only going to increase. It was tough enough when...

I am Leon Gettler. I am a senior business journalist at The Age, a leading Australian broadsheet newspaper. I specialize in writing about management issues which covers a range of areas including...