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Accounting
by leon on November 30, 2006
Companies might be taking their audit committees more seriously but there's still a long way to go, according to a new study.The number of accountants sitting on audit committees has more than dou...
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SOX
by leon on November 29, 2006
New York governor-elect Eliot Spitzer has attacked members of the Bush administration and business lobbyists for trying to roll back Sarbanes-Oxley.In an interview with the Financial Times, Spitzer sa...
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Ethics
by leon on November 29, 2006
The Hong Kong apparel industry has been given the thumbs down for its lack of accountability on labor standards and compliance.A report prepared by Oxfam Hong Kong, Transparency Report: How Hong Kong ...
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risk
by leon on November 29, 2006
With identify fraud increasing at an alarming rate, it's worth checking out this timely piece Six ways to avoid identity theft.The piece is based largely on the Javelin Strategy and Research 2006 ...
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corporate crime
by leon on November 28, 2006
Australia's wheat trade is under the microscope and AWB's export monopoly is about to end following damning findings from the Cole inquiry into bribes paid to the Saddam Hussein regime using m...
Read more of AWB fallout
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risk
by leon on November 28, 2006
The private equity frenzy is starting to feel like the dot com bubble. Whenever I hear talk of new business paradigms, it's a case of deja vu. And the risks are getting bigger.One of the tell-tale...
Read more of Private equity bubble trouble
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SOX
by leon on November 28, 2006
With Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's Committee on Capital Markets Regulation due to report its findings on Sarbanes-Oxley this week, questions are now being raised whether a SOX rollback is a go...
Read more of Paulson and SOX: the backlash
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executive pay
by leon on November 26, 2006
Interesting connections coming out of the announcement by Houston-based HCC Insurance Holdings that it had been backdating stock option grants from 1995.The President's youngest brother Marvin was...
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risk
by leon on November 25, 2006
Companies and governments are asking us to trust them when we hand over confidential information about ourselves.So it's hardly reassuring when we have a study conducted by Unisys in partnership w...
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executive pay
by leon on November 25, 2006
Good help is hard to find these days, particularly at the sharp edge of the business world where Zegna suits, seven figure base salaries and jammy incentives are all the go.Which makes the fuss around...
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corporate governance
by leon on November 23, 2006
Yes, it's that time of year to nominate the biggest turkeys since last November.This year's list is extensive. There's no shortage of candidates so I thought better list them all and let y...
Read more of Corporate governance turkeys of the year
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Ethics
by leon on November 23, 2006
The death last week of economist Milton Friedman has prompted plenty of comments about his attacks on corporate social responsibility.The social responsibility of business, Friedman famously said, ...
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corporate governance
by leon on November 23, 2006
The costs of Sarbanes-Oxley has prompted some smaller companies to delist themselves from the stock market and "go dark''. Instead of pouring money into accounting and legal costs, they c...
Read more of Going dark with corporate governance
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corporate reputation
by leon on November 22, 2006
Google's extraordinary rise has continued with the company's shares rocketing past $500, turning its employees into millionaires and locking its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin into multi-...
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corporate crime
by leon on November 22, 2006
Ken Lay's dead and his lieutenants are either in the slammer or heading there, but Enron's traders are doing very well, thank you very much. It seems that the second biggest bankruptcy in US h...
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Accounting
by leon on November 20, 2006
Last week I wrote in this blog entry about how the world's six biggest accounting firms are now calling for changes that include replacing quarterly financial statements with real-time Internet-ba...
Read more of Vision of the bean counters
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SOX
by leon on November 20, 2006
Good news for start-ups with Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox flagging that some of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate compliance rules will be eased back. In particular Section 4...
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executive pay
by leon on November 19, 2006
So you think backdating stock options is legit?Check a new study which has found that hundreds of US company bosses inflated their pay by as much as 10 per cent by secretly backdating share options. D...
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Ethics
by leon on November 18, 2006
Al Gore was in Australia this week and I got the chance to catch up with him.He granted the interview on the strict condition that I was not to ask him the obvious question about his plans for 2008. B...
Read more of Interview with Al Gore
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corporate crime
by leon on November 18, 2006
So Richard Causey, Enron's former chief accounting officer, has been sentenced to 5 1/2 years for his role in the scandal.That's 18 months less than the seven year maximum he agreed to serve w...
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executive pay
by leon on November 18, 2006
American bosses continue to rake it in, with their average annual cash bonuses going up by close to half and total cash compensation up by about one-third, according to research released by the Econom...
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Ethics
by leon on November 16, 2006
I have written about how organisations are designed to stop people from speaking out. I have written about how fear in the workplace and hierarchical organisations discourage whistleblowers. I've ...
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Accounting
by leon on November 15, 2006
Now that they have roared back into power, one of the first things the Democrats have done is introduce legislation in the House and Senate extending the life of the Office of the Special Inspector Ge...
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SOX
by leon on November 15, 2006
Silicon Valley venture capitalists will finally see Sarbanes-Oxley being wound back. They have been pushing politicians and regulators hard to water down the legislation, claiming it had resulted in a...
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Accounting
by leon on November 14, 2006
With regulators in Britain warning companies to draw up contingency plans in case one of the big four accounting firms collapses, attention is again drawn to the unhealthy dominance of the big players...
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Compliance
by leon on November 14, 2006
Might be something in the water! Or is it just the regulations?Employees on Wall Street are much more aware of the regulatory compliance culture and electronic monitoring of their email than their cou...
Read more of Wall Street more likely to dodge compliance
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corporate crime
by leon on November 13, 2006
With Conrad Black's fraud trial nearing, the revelations are now coming thick and fast with the release of London journalist Tom Bower's new book Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing On The Edge.Bru...
Read more of Black tales
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Accounting
by leon on November 12, 2006
When accountants start talking about getting innovative and radical, it's time to sit up.And when the world's six biggest accounting firms join forces and publish a report that calls for, amon...
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risk
by leon on November 10, 2006
Prepare for a new wave of bankruptcies over the next six to 18 months, experts are predicting.There are a number of triggers that could set off the wave of bankruptcies, reports CFO.com.While nearly h...
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SOX
by leon on November 10, 2006
With Tuesday's thumping of the GOP signalling the beginning of the post-Bush era, expectations are running strong that Sarbanes-Oxley will now get its long-awaited overhaul.The Democrats will unwi...
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strategy
by leon on November 9, 2006
With the UN conference on climate change now under way in Nairobi, with new reports of Rupert Murdoch having a change of heart on climate and now calling for a new global treaty, and with reports that...
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Ethics
by leon on November 9, 2006
Beware of companies bearing gifts. Corporate social resonsibility is not to be trusted because it has built-in incentives for hypocrisy. Such is the warning from financier George Soros.Speaking at a c...
Read more of George Soros: corporate social responsibility and hypocrisy
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Ethics
by leon on November 9, 2006
Earlier this year, I did a blog entry attacking Body Shop founder Anita Roddick when she called for a consumer boycott of nestle products, despite the fact that Nestle was a major shareholder in Frenc...
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Ethics
by leon on November 8, 2006
Interesting findings from the Transparency International 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).The CPI is based on expert opinion surveys of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the worl...
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strategy
by leon on November 7, 2006
Fascinating study from three academics looking at the relationship between political contributions and stock price. Michael Cooper from the University of Utah and Huseyin Gulen and Alexei Ovtchinnikov...
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SOX
by leon on November 6, 2006
If the Democrats win control of one or both houses of Congress this week, what's the outlook for Sarbanes-Oxley?In a pitch for the business vote, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank says Sarbanes-...
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SOX
by leon on November 6, 2006
Trust in institutions is in serious decline, writes commentator Sebastian Mallaby.It's a trend that only began in the noughties, says Mallaby. Trust in Government started declining from the time o...
Read more of SOX, trust and ethics
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Accounting
by leon on November 5, 2006
Earlier this week, I did a blog entry on the problems doing the accounting for Iraqi reconstruction.Now we have the extraordinary news that the Bush administration is closing down the Office of the Sp...
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regulators
by leon on November 4, 2006
Pencil in March 26. That's when Citigroup has to deal with the lawsuit over insider trading and failure to manage its conflicts of interest.Citigroup is being sued by the Australian Securities and...
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risk
by leon on November 3, 2006
A study on corporate security from the Conference Board and commissioned by the Department of homeland security has found some gaps in the way companies are approaching security. It also sends a messa...
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Accounting
by leon on November 2, 2006
We have talked many times how Sarbanes-Oxley has turned into an El Dorado for accountants. We've explored that here and here and here and here.Not content with that, the Big Four are now moving cl...
Read more of Accountants rake it, now they want protection
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Accounting
by leon on November 2, 2006
With the cost of the war in Iraq now at $2 trillion, and climbing, according to estimates from researchers including Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, it's alarming to read news reports of a US Gove...
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Accounting
by leon on November 1, 2006
Demand is high for younger accountants but the picture doesn't look that flash for the older ones.In Britain, a new study has found that beancounter wages start heading south once they hit the age...
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SOX
by leon on November 1, 2006
So now US vice president Dick Cheney has come out gun blazing, attacking Sarbanes-Oxley!Might have something to do with next week's elections and attempts to shore up the business vote.In an inter...
