September 28, 2006
via BBC news
The top lawyer at Hewlett Packard (HP) has resigned before a congressional hearing into its snooping on the phone records of executives and journalists.
...full story
September 15, 2006
via Forbes.com
Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who made his fortune in television, retail, and cellular services, and is one of Mexico's more colorful billionaires, reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week in the first lawsuit against a foreign company under the rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
...full story
September 14, 2006
via CSO.com
How economic espionage and intellectual property theft destroy businesses and endanger the global economy.
...full story
August 16, 2006
via Forbes.com
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 9 granted smaller companies and many foreign private issuers extra time to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's internal control reporting and auditing provisions.
...full story
July 10, 2006
via Seattle Times
In a move that would have broad implications for software, movies, music and pharmaceuticals, the U.S. said Thursday it may sue China as early as this fall for failing to protect intellectual property as required by trade agreements.
...full story
June 19, 2006
via NetworkWorld
The cost to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act fell slightly in 2005 - but not enough to deter some public companies from going private.
...full story
May 24, 2006
via Washington Post
Fannie Mae engaged in "extensive financial fraud" over six years by doctoring earnings so executives could collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, federal officials said yesterday in a report that portrayed a company determined to play by its own rules.
...full story
May 10, 2006
via OpEd News
Washington DC Attorney, Jason Zuckerman, says a positive result of the recent corporate scandals is the recognition of the value of whistleblowers in exposing fraud, corruption, and other wrongdoing within a company.
...full story
April 28, 2006
via Law.com
Arbitration confirmed despite security concerns.
...full story
April 28, 2006
via CFO.com
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rules on independence, tax services, and contingent fees, some of which became effective on April 29.
...full story
April 24, 2006
via LA Times
SEC advisors seek to ease rules for smaller firms. Sarbanes-Oxley critics are speaking up.
...full story
April 19, 2006
via WebCPA
An independent report, backed by data from Big Four clients, shows that corporate auditing costs for Sarbanes-Oxley 404 compliance dropped significantly in 2005.
...full story
April 13, 2006
via Financial Times
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, predicted yesterday the US would make "changes" to the burdensome financial and corporate governance requirements driving companies out of US markets.
...full story
April 8, 2006
via Houston Chronicle
A federal labor board, weighing a closely watched test case of the nation's new law to protect corporate whistle-blowers, has upheld an order to a tiny Virginia bank to reinstate a fired executive, while giving the company a chance to appeal.
...full story
April 6, 2006
via Bloomberg
Merck & Co.'s former Chief Executive Officer Raymond Gilmartin will testify today to a jury weighing punitive damages after awarding $4.5 million to a 77-year-old man who blamed the company's painkiller Vioxx for his heart attack.
...full story
April 4, 2006
via Forbes
It scuttles acquisition deals, damages companies' reputations and costs millions of dollars in fines and legal fees. What is it? Bribery of foreign officials. And while the crime isn't new, the level of enforcement is.
...full story
March 31, 2006
via Columbia Daily Tribune
Attorney general raises environmental question.
...full story
March 30, 2006
via Macleans
American lawmakers have decided that keeping Wall Street on a short leash wasn't such a hot idea after all.
...full story
March 28, 2006
via Inc.com
Some businesses that once feared whistleblowers are now giving workers new ways to report wrongdoing.
...full story
March 25, 2006
via Charlotte Observer
As Duke Energy Corp. and Cinergy Corp. cleared their final hurdle to a merger Friday, 28 Cinergy executives stepped that much closer to $143 million in payouts.
...full story
March 23, 2006
via Washington Post
Sen. Paul Sarbanes on Thursday defended the benefits of his eponymous corporate reform law against critics who are trying to roll back some of the regulations they say were hurried overreactions to corporate scandals.
...full story
March 22, 2006
via CNNMoney
Sarbanes-Oxley opponents are gaining steam just a few years after corporate scandals rocked Wall Street. Is corporate America already forgetting Enron's lessons?
...full story
March 19, 2006
via MSNBC
New rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission are designed to make stockholders better informed about executive compensation, but the biggest impact of the rules may be to deflate golden parachutes.
...full story
March 15, 2006
via MSNBC
Former manager, accountant testify Lay, Skilling ignored their warnings
...full story
March 15, 2006
via Toronto Star
Sherron Watkins, the former Enron vice-president who warned higher-ups the company was a house of cards ready to fall, testified Wednesday she discussed her concerns with company founder Kenneth Lay only to learn months later that her job was threatened for speaking up.
...full story
March 13, 2006
via Red Herring
The SEC is pressured to lighten up, already.
...full story
March 10, 2006
via Reuters
Canada's public companies will have to tell investors how effective their internal controls over financial reporting are under stringent new rules proposed on Friday by securities regulators.
...full story
March 8, 2006
via CFO.com
The new amendments will enable prosecutors to use electronic surveillance of executives suspected to be involved in such misdeeds as price fixing and bid rigging. Intellectual property could also be at risk.
...full story
March 7, 2006
via CBS News
The House voted Tuesday to strengthen laws targeting counterfeit goods, aiming at products that drain billions of dollars from U.S. manufacturers and could harm consumers.
...full story
March 7, 2006
via Corp Watch
Rhode Island-based defense contractors Custer Battles were "war profiteers" and "war whores" who filed phony claims for some of the millions of dollars they made in Iraq, an attorney for two whistleblowers told a federal jury during final arguments in a civil lawsuit Tuesday.
...full story
March 3, 2006
via International Herald Tribune
North American companies expect to spend $27.3 billion on regulatory compliance this year, with less than a quarter of that total attributable to the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance law, according to a survey released Thursday.
...full story
March 3, 2006
via CFO.com
Companies that have adopted majority-voting policies or bylaws are still in the minority, but that's changing rapidly, mounting evidence suggests.
...full story
March 2, 2006
via MSN Money
English may have been good enough for Shakespeare, but in linguistically defensive France, it is just not up to snuff -- even for corporate memos and instruction manuals.
...full story
March 2, 2006
via Image and Data Manager
US financial services giant, Morgan Stanley is fined US$15-million (AU$20-million) this month for failing to manage its emails.
...full story
March 2, 2006
via Forbes
There's an economic war being waged among U.S. states. They're fiercely trying to undercut each other in the game of promising big companies tax breaks if they set up shop or expand within their borders. Armies of lobbyists have jumped in to help powerful firms get a piece of the corporate welfare. And as a result, billions are being siphoned from state coffers.
...full story
March 1, 2006
via Consultant News
BearingPoint has named Laurent Lutz General Counsel and Secretary. Lutz joins BearingPoint from Accenture, where, as Associate General Counsel, he was responsible for all legal matters relating to Accenture’s SEC compliance, corporate and finance activities.
...full story
March 1, 2006
via Times
Fraud investigations and new rules enforced by the American Government cost Wall Street firms $25 billion (£14 billion) last year, almost double the regulatory fees that they paid before the recent crackdown on corporate crime.
...full story
March 1, 2006
via Boston Herald
The anti-corruption Sarbanes-Oxley law is stunting innovation and growth among smaller Masschusetts high-tech and biotech firms, according to a new report that recommends the feds reduce the red tape burdening companies.
...full story
February 28, 2006
via Houston Chronicle
Corporate governance reform is dead. Its last gasp was stifled by the subpoenas issued last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission against several news organizations and writers.
...full story
February 28, 2006
via Pioneer Press
Analysts attribute the increase in deals in part to heightened activism among investors such as hedge funds that are pushing companies to sell off unprofitable business units. Another factor is the long-held belief that buying a competitor is the fastest way to expand a company.
...full story
February 27, 2006
via The New York Times
The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
...full story
February 27, 2006
via Canadian Business
There's an old joke that goes something like this: How many lawyers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: None. Lawyers only screw us. Rightly or wrongly, the prevailing attitude in the corporate world seems to be that when it comes to deal-making or legal compliance, lawyers are a necessary evil.
...full story
February 20, 2006
via Sign On San Diego
A Securities and Exchange Commission advisory panel is expected to move forward Tuesday in urging the agency to drop a key part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law to ease the reporting burden for small companies.
...full story
February 10, 2006
via Miami Herald
At the opening of the Enron trial, federal prosecutor John C. Hueston declared: ''It is about lies and choices.'' For lawyers, however, the call to account for corporate wrongdoing sounded in Enron is not about lies; it is about choices. The choices arise in counseling corporate executives to make hard business judgments.
...full story
February 9, 2006
via Charlotte Observer
Was Mark Livingston trying to blow the whistle on suspect corporate behavior, and protect his company's shareholders? Or was he making trouble?
...full story
January 31, 2006
via The Seattle Times
At Boeing's annual leadership retreat earlier this month, the company's top lawyer delivered a devastating worst-case assessment of the potential damage that still looms from the company's recent ethics scandals.
...full story
|