Articles | Compliance Week – Page 286
-
Article
CCOs Playing a Stronger Role in Data Privacy Practices
Image: As data privacy laws proliferate, they are creating a web that traps how corporations use personal data in their operations. The challenge for compliance officers: how to play a more strategic role and ensure your business doesn’t get stuck. “The inclusion of the CCO function in defining controls related ...
-
Article
Final Pay Ratio Rule Gives a Few Compliance Breaks
Image: Some good news now that the SEC’s much-maligned pay ratio disclosure rule is here: Companies forced to disclose that comparison of CEO compensation to pay of the median employee might find the final rule less onerous than the original proposal from 2013. “The biggest surprise is that the SEC ...
-
Article
FAQs, but Few Answers, on Iran Deal Implications
Image: Questions abound on the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Assuming the agreement comes into force, what does that mean for compliance officers? Nothing easy, as your sanctions effort must shift to more complex due diligence efforts. “The sanctions world is moving from an entity-based inquiry to an entity- and activity-based inquiry. ...
-
Article
Comment Letter Conversations Get a Bit Easier
Those awkward conversations you have with SEC staff when they comment on your periodic filings? They’re getting easier. The number of comment letter conversations has fallen 50 percent in the last five years, suggesting overall improvement in financial reporting. “Obviously internal controls have gotten better at companies, and that certainly ...
-
Article
Taxing Times Ahead on Revenue Standard
Among the many issues companies must address as they adopt the new revenue recognition standard, tax consequences are gaining more attention. The IRS is seeking comment on how burdensome tax reporting might become, and the standard’s fundamental shift in recognizing revenue could make the burden quite heavy. “There’s a lot ...
-
Article
SEC Pushes New Limits on Cyber-Security, Securities Fraud
Another byproduct of life in the cyber-security age: The SEC is redefining insider trading to focus more on improper trading, even if you are a thief mining a company for inside information without actually working there. The misconduct—called, yes, “outsider trading”—seems to be an SEC-enforceable offense so far, and it ...
-
Article
Refresher Course on Discipline of Good Investigations
Image: The damage wrought by inept internal investigations can go well beyond wasted time and money; they can cause civil litigation, enforcement risk, and bad publicity. This week we have a refresher on principles for good internal investigations, something every compliance officer must know how to do well. “Ninety percent ...
-
Article
Small-Company Rules Inch Forward
Congress (and SEC commissioners) routinely complains that the SEC is so focused on churning out overdue rules for compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act, it has neglected to churn out overdue rules on capital formation required under the JOBS Act. In truth, the SEC is likely to move forward with what ...
-
Article
Squeezed: Banks Have No Easy Path on De-Risking
Image: Money service businesses, bitcoin startups, marijuana shops; the population of high-risk customers in the banking world is surging. Regulators have sent conflicting messages about wholesale de-risking of certain sectors, and that can force painful questions about how to build effective, and extensive, due diligence programs. “Regulators are talking from ...
-
Article
Auditing Anti-Corruption Efforts: Best Practices Take Shape
Image: More anti-corruption efforts by compliance departments means more auditing of those programs by internal audit, and a vanguard of businesses (many of them, admittedly, stung by misconduct violations in the past) are pioneering better auditing techniques on that point. Tom O’Reilly, director of internal audit at Analog Devices, says ...
-
Article
The Keys to Better Access Control Systems
Image: Gone are the days when “access control” meant locking your door or filing cabinet. Now compliance, IT, and audit teams must collaborate on controls to access networks rather than physical stores of information. Inside, we look at three best practices to design strong access control and at how to ...
-
Article
Hertz Restatement Drives Home Top-Level Control Issues
Image: Car rental kingpin Hertz Corp. is nearly finished with its sweeping restatement of several years’ worth of financial statements, and it’s giving compliance and audit executives plenty of cautionary tales to read. Its latest annual report outlines—in frank detail—more than a dozen failures, most of them in senior leadership. ...
-
Article
Four Years On, Firms Still Struggle With CFPB Compliance
What have we learned in the four years the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on the beat? For starters, it’s aggressive, returning $10 billion so far to consumers through enforcement actions. A solid understanding of the CFPB’s compliance program expectations remains elusive, and the mood among firms in the ...
-
Article
How Comment Letters Could Shape the Pay Ratio Rule
When the SEC proposed its pay ratio disclosure rule in 2013, it included a list of nearly 60 questions for public comment. The response: 287,547 letters and counting, with plenty of ideas about dealing with foreign workforces, seasonal workers, employee exclusions, and Sarbanes-Oxley certification risks. As the final rule slouches ...
-
Article
University Compliance Programs Taking Shape
Image: Big compliance changes are afoot in higher education, as more universities hire their first enterprise-wide compliance officer—a trend that took flight in 2013 and keeps on going. “[A]cademic medical centers aside, a central compliance function is a newer concept than in the corporate world,” says Robert Roach, CCO of ...
-
Article
Q&A: How PetroTiger Avoided FCPA Prosecution
Image: As part of our occasional series of conversations with voices in the compliance world, we caught up with Timothy Treanor, a partner with law firm Sidley Austin who represented oil and gas company PetroTiger. In June, PetroTiger became just the second company in recent history of the Foreign Corrupt ...
-
Article
Firms Prepare for Heightened AML, Due Diligence Expectations
Expect an even greater focus on anti-money laundering efforts in upcoming examinations by the SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. That was the message from speakers at a “Compliance Outreach Program” the Securities and Exchange Commission hosted for financial firms last week. What’s more: New Treasury Department rules that could ...
-
Article
Extra Year on Revenue Standard Means More Time to Sweat
Image: Don’t let your accounting department get too excited with that additional year FASB has granted to adopt the new standard for revenue recognition. Experts helping companies’ implementation efforts say that extra time is much needed, with plenty of questions about the standard remaining unanswered. And don’t forget, “half of ...
-
Article
Taming Vendor Risks Continues to Flummox Compliance Programs
Image: Vendor risks driving you crazy? Well, you are not alone. In a recent survey compliance and audit professionals gave their vendor risk management programs an overall score of only 2.8 on a 1 to 5 scale. Thankfully, corporate boardrooms are paying more attention now. “It’s risen to a level ...
-
Article
Distilling Lessons From Recent Sanctions Cases
The Justice Department clearly is prosecuting more companies for sanctions or export control violations: 15 enforcement actions since 2010, compared to only three in the prior three years. Inside, we’ve sifted out themes arising from those settlements to understand more about what factors regulators weigh when resolving charges and how ...