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litigation
by leon on September 30, 2007
Raising his profile and flirting with the idea of a presidential bid, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just received unwanted publicity with news that the company he founded is being sued by the ...
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Ethics
by leon on September 29, 2007
Corporate apologies are coming in thick and fast. The list includes Mattel saying sorry for the lead paint found in toys, Apple's Steve Jobs apologizing to iPhone early adopters, Whole Foods Mark...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 29, 2007
He might be looking at a lengthy spell behind bars but Conrad Black's self-belief remains unshakeable. With his sentencing coming up in late November, Black resumed his column in the newspaper he...
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SOX
by leon on September 28, 2007
More than five years after the Bush administration brought in the world's toughest anti-fraud law, and Governments around the world followed suit, the latest data suggests that fraud is stronger ...
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strategy
by leon on September 27, 2007
In countries around the world, including Australia, Governments have adopted policies around the ideology of labour market deregulation. Put simply, the view is that a deregulated labour market is go...
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Ethics
by leon on September 27, 2007
The New York Times details the close and seemingly collusive relationship that the Interior Department has with oil companies. It tells us of a report that stops short of calling officials corrupt bu...
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markets
by leon on September 26, 2007
The ratings agencies came under plenty of well-deserved fire in the fallout from the subprime debacle. Basically, the problem was that ratings agencies had been treating mortgage-backed securities as...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 26, 2007
Caught up in those bribery and corruption allegations involving hundreds of millions of Euros, Siemens is desperately trying to move on.Next week, Peter Solmssen will become the board's general c...
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regulators
by leon on September 26, 2007
Imagine a world where millions of dollars can flow through the system daily, a world where all these exchanges can happen anonymously, where there are no police, courts and extradition laws. Perfect ...
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risk
by leon on September 25, 2007
A coalition of interests, including investors are petitioning the Securities and Exchange Commission to force companies to come clean on pollution risks, reports MarketWatch.Basically, the argument i...
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risk
by leon on September 25, 2007
This is the week of critical meetings to find answers on what to do about global warming. In New York, the United Nations will be looking at tighter emission mandates and the Bush administration will...
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Accounting
by leon on September 24, 2007
How much can we believe companies that report increased earnings over 20 quarters?A new study, reported in the International Herald Tribune, suggests we should probably take it with a bag or three of...
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litigation
by leon on September 22, 2007
Back in July, I pointed to findings from Cornerstone Research and Stanford University Law School showing that the number of securities class actions was falling, with suggestions that this represente...
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regulators
by leon on September 21, 2007
Last year, I wrote about the Securities and Exchange Commission getting slated by the Government Accountability Office. You can read some of the reports here and here.Now the Government Accountabilit...
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SOX
by leon on September 21, 2007
The rigorous compliance environment in the United States following Sarbanes-Oxley has turned into a real money spinner for attorneys.According to the 2007 Altman Weil Law Department Compensation Benc...
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markets
by leon on September 20, 2007
The jury is still out on whether the Fed's decision for cuts of half a percentage point will fix the problems in the US market. The cuts were expected so the market for now sees it as a sign that...
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Ethics
by leon on September 20, 2007
Interesting report from London-based Ethical Investment Research Services identifying gaps in the approach of business towards ethical issues.In the area of corporate governance, businesses tend to b...
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risk
by leon on September 19, 2007
Financial institutions might be spending more on IT security but they continue to struggle and many are now starting to realize that the big problem is with people. Either with their own employees, o...
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markets
by leon on September 19, 2007
When it comes to market morality, it's hard to make the call between sin and virtue stocks. Particularly with all the volatility that's going on now.The Vice Fund, which invests in tobacco, g...
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SOX
by leon on September 19, 2007
Just finished Dov Seidman's book How. Apart from his views on the challenges facing business today, the most fascinating parts were his insights into why imposing stronger laws like Sarbanes-Oxley...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 18, 2007
He might well have been according to a though-provoking study from the University of Rochester's James Brickley.The study The Role of CEOs in Large Corporations:Evidence from Ken Lay at Enron can ...
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corporate reputation
by leon on September 18, 2007
CEOs say attacks on corporate reputation are becoming more frequent, apologies from the boss are losing potency and it takes about 3 and half years to recover when your reputation has been trashed.Ju...
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Accounting
by leon on September 15, 2007
In an historically significant move, the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged 69 accounting firms and individuals - 37 firms and 32 audit partners - with violating Sarbanes-Oxley by failing...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 15, 2007
Between April 2003 and June 2004, the Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion to help run war-ravaged Iraq. Most of the money came exclusively from assets frozen in US banks dating back to the 1990 Gulf ...
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Ethics
by leon on September 14, 2007
Most of us like to think we are ethical.Enron was a bunch of crooks, Andersen colluded with them and Conrad Black and his lackeys were fraudsters. There is no way we are like that.Or are we?If that w...
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Compliance
, Information About
by leon on September 13, 2007
With a fascinating email trail at the heart of an industrial espionage case involving McLaren and Ferrari and with Morgan Stanley's email woes last year, it's time to ask whether companies n...
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markets
by leon on September 13, 2007
With forecasts that the US economy will either come perilously close to recession , or actually slip into recession, chief financial officers are increasingly gloomy about the prospects of the world&...
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risk
by leon on September 13, 2007
Last week, I talked about how business leaders believed they were now working in an increasingly dangerous world with that political violence shaping up as a bigger problem than crime.Now the PRS Gro...
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corporate governance
by leon on September 13, 2007
Rupert Murdoch has to deal with a persistent and effective Australian shareholder activist in Stephen Mayne.News Corp tried unsuccessfully to stop a proposal from Mayne that the company scrap its out...
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Accounting
by leon on September 12, 2007
I've talked about how much of a money spinner Sarbanes-Oxley has been for accountants.But they work for it too.New research from Robert Half shows that finance professionals are putting in longer...
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Ethics
by leon on September 12, 2007
How does a company live with whistleblowers? What does it have to do to encourage people to speak when there are issues, but at the same time ensure that it does not throw operations and management i...
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Accounting
by leon on September 11, 2007
The fallout from Dell's accounting shell games continue.Now, Dell boss Michael Dell has told a Citigroup technology conference in New York that he had nothing to do with it. "I was not invol...
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corporate governance
by leon on September 11, 2007
In their books Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton argue that leadership is not all it's cracked up to be. They show how change at the top has lit...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 9, 2007
Maybe Jeff Skilling has taken some lessons from fellow-fraudster Conrad Black who put up a motion asking for either a retrial or acquittal, claiming the prosecution had not proved its case.Now the f...
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risk
by leon on September 8, 2007
This week, I sat down to have a chat with Thomas Homer-Dixon, professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and author of The Upside of Down. In his book, Homer-Dixon argues that the wo...
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Accounting
by leon on September 8, 2007
For the last two years, I have been talking about how Sarbanes-Oxley has been a licence to print money for the accounting profession.Examples are here and here.And now the latest Rosenberg MAP survey...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 6, 2007
The Siemens group might have new leadership but the bribery scandal is not going away with reports that that US Securities and Exchange Commission is now putting pressure on the German government to ...
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risk
by leon on September 6, 2007
Business leaders believe they are now working in an increasingly dangerous world with political violence shaping up as a growing risk for companies planning to invest in big ventures.An Economist Int...
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risk
by leon on September 5, 2007
Technology-related risks might rank high on the agenda for boards these days. But new research suggests many British company directors are totally clueless when it comes to understanding IT risks.The...
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risk
by leon on September 5, 2007
Have finished reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's thought-provoking book The Black Swan. All about the futility and danger of making and relying on forecasts.Basically, Taleb argues that we are cogni...
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Compliance
by leon on September 4, 2007
Last month I presented an interview with AXS-One chairman and CEO Bill Lyons on the problems companies had with email compliance.Now we are told of the top five email compliance mistakes.The mistakes...
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markets
by leon on September 4, 2007
With the disaster confronting America's home owners now shaping up as a hot political issue, it's no surprise that President George Bush has come up with a rescue package. And the Fed is prom...
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Ethics
by leon on September 3, 2007
Accountants and auditors are supposed to be the gatekeepers that protect us from fraud.So it's a bit of a worry when we come across a study that finds accounting students are just as likely to ch...
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corporate crime
by leon on September 3, 2007
Conrad Black is not going down without a fight. And when it comes to chutzpah, this guy is hard to beat.Last week, he put up a motion asking for an acquittal or new trial on the grounds that the US G...
