One of the great questions that haunts ethics and compliance officers is whether, when the time comes, they will be able to exercise ethical leadership under great pressure. I hear compliance executives explore that question—that fear, really—whenever their guards are down. At one Compliance Week executive forum last year, a general counsel quipped, “How many […]
Matt Kelly
Posted inFrom the Archive
Psychology of the Fraudster, as Told From the Front Lines
The following is a true story, with minor details changed to protect the innocent and the foolish. Jack was a top sales executive in the fastest-growing division of the company. As such, when the company had its annual sales conference in Las Vegas last month, Jack and his whole team were invited out and held […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
What Bribery Act Enforcement Might Look Like
LONDON—I met my spy monitoring the Serious Fraud Office this week at his offices in Westminster. I had been in London for four days already, seeing compliance officers and audit partners and software vendors and barristers. My mission was to better understand the challenges of running a compliance program in the United Kingdom and in […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
MF Global: Tone Deaf at the Top, and Then Disaster
I had expected to spend this weekend digesting the latest report on the demise of MF Global, a 174-page post-mortem published last week by the trustee in charge of investigating how MF Global managed to lose $1.2 billion of customer money before it went bankrupt in October 2011. For better or worse, however, compliance and […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
All the Latest on All the Compliance Week Conferences
The Compliance Week 2013 conference is nearing the home stretch—and boy, do we have some news for you about it. Foremost, we have launched a new website for the annual conference (happening May 20-22, in Washington, D.C.) that has our expanded agenda and latest list of speakers. You can see the dozens of sessions we […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Report: GRC Vendor Consolidation Continues
Consolidation among software vendors in the governance, risk, and compliance sector seems to happen in waves that arrive every few years, and the latest wave seems to be upon us right now. So says a report from Berkery Noyes, an investment banking firm that tracks these things. The pace of merger activity is rising, as […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Putting Big Data Principles to Work in Audit & Compliance
Readers of these pages will know that Compliance Week closely follows the idea of Big Data. (Don’t miss our virtual conference on ethics and compliance risks in Big Data, happening Wednesday, March 27.) Yes, software vendors and consultants have spun up quite a bit of hype around the subject, but nevertheless, Big Data today is […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
A Bracket-Based Approach to Ethics & Compliance
Any NCAA Final Four enthusiasts looking for some way to connect the basketball playoffs to ethics and compliance, rest easy—one of Compliance Week’s many spies has found it. We were recently tipped off to the existence of the “March Madness Compliance Risk Assessment Bracket,” penned by Ryan McConnell, a former federal prosecutor who has since […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Anti-Corruption Enthusiasts, We Need Your Help!
Calling all FCPA and anti-corruption enthusiasts, Compliance Week needs your help! Compliance Week and Kroll Advisory have teamed up to undertake a major survey on corporate anti-corruption programs, and we’re asking compliance executives to participate. The survey itself—the 2013 “Global Anti-Bribery Benchmarking Report”—can be found here: http://bit.ly/Ynhe66. The survey should take no more than 20 […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
The Merits & Risks of Automating Regulatory Compliance
There I was last week, talking with my friend the Vendor, as he sat across a conference room table from me smartly describing his software’s approach to regulatory compliance. And actually, his idea was pretty smart. Start with the obvious, he said. Highly regulated industries—mostly finance, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and energy—have exhaustive compliance demands. Regulators have […]