Without doubt, Big Data is on the rise. President Obama authorized $200 million in March to be spent on Big Data research for the federal government; the CIO of Walmart posted a video on YouTube just this month where she proclaimed that “retail essentially is Big Data.” Any number of surveys find that executives are […]
Alix Stuart
Posted inAnti-Bribery
Big Data Playing a Bigger Role in Fraud-Spotting
Ferreting out fraud is never easy. For years, compliance professionals have relied on the bravery of whistleblowers, the mis-steps of perpetrators, and a good amount of luck to uncover wrongdoing both inside and outside their companies. That may all be changing with the advent of the Big Data era. These days, high-powered analytic tools can […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Big Data: Starting Small, Scaling Up
Big Data is a big deal for Corporate America right now, yes—but that doesn’t necessarily mean the idea is, well, a big bang. “A series of familiar ideas writ large” may be the better way to put it. Take the property and casualty insurance market. Underwriting policies has always been a mix of art and […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Sustainability Grows on the Shareholder Agenda
Social and environmental issues continue their upward march in importance to shareholders, comprising nearly half of all shareholder proposals filed this proxy season so far, according to proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services. Even if not all of those proposals will come to a vote—and many surely will not—they indicate that the wellspring of interest […]
Posted inUncategorized
Sunshine Act Putting the Heat on Healthcare Firms
Drug companies and medical device makers are searching for a miracle cure of their own these days—to solve the enormously difficult task of compliance with healthcare reform’s new Sunshine Rules. The rules require those two sectors to track and disclose all the payments they make to medical professionals; that might range from research grants paid […]
Posted inUncategorized
New Swap Rules Put Compliance Burden on Dealers
Swaps dealers are preparing for substantial changes to compliance and reporting requirements in the business of trading derivatives—which means swaps and derivative users can expect major changes to the market too. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has lately published a flurry of final rules stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act that are intended to protect swaps […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
ISS Compensation Peer Group Comparisons Raise Hackles
As companies wade into the second year of shareholder advisory votes on executive compensation, their approaches to say-on-pay range from brash defiance to penitent compliance. The wide array of strategies may be due to a new evaluation method at proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services that makes it harder to hew to the norm and […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
HHS Steps Up Demands in Hospital Audits
Hospital compliance officers, your job is getting harder—and more important. The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a new type of audit for Medicare payments, this one targeted at a range of specific risk areas and going much deeper than previous audits. Dubbed “Medicare compliance reviews,” they have so far netted the HHS […]
Posted inUncategorized
Mass. Data Privacy Law Goes Into Full Effect
The last and most difficult provision of Massachusetts’ notorious data privacy law kicks in March 1, putting companies nationwide in the tenuous position of policing their third-party service providers. The law, enacted in response to TJX Cos.’ infamous data privacy breach in 2007 that exposed the private data of some 46 million people, at first […]
