Well of course I went to see “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” this weekend. I’m the editor of a magazine that writes about securities regulation and ethical business conduct. How could I not go see it? Unfortunately, watching the film was a hardship assignment. It’s awful. The plot is a dull morality play, pinned to […]
Matt Kelly
Posted inFrom the Archive
The Fall Rulemaking Season Begins
Well, autumn is here and everyone is back to work, including all your regulators in Washington. That means all those rules promised in the Dodd-Frank Act passed this summer will now start appearing, and compliance departments should plan accordingly. One of the most notable new rules has already arrived: shareholder access to the proxy statement, […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Hewlett-Packard: When They Make the Movie…
Eternally great character actor John Heard was pretty much born to play the role of ex-CEO Mark Hurd, don’t you think? My prediction is that this sorry drama will either end up as a biopic movie running evenings on CNBC after the market closes, or be in the inspiration for some knock-off story in Law […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Notes of Concern on Whistleblowing
My friend the Corporate Secretary called me the other day. He works at a consumer products company, and we chat every now and then about various compliance and governance issues. On his mind this time: the new whistleblower reward program established by the Dodd-Frank Act, and how it might ruin any incentive employees have to […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: Compliance Newcomer Teaches the Basics
Early one Friday afternoon last month, I had the opportunity to meet a newly minted chief compliance officer. She had been in the job only one month, was passing through town, and wanted to talk about the current events in compliance over lunch. We settled into a restaurant near my office and began chatting. “So […]
Posted inEthics & Culture
What Mark Hurd and HP Tell Us About Compliance
Last Friday afternoon I had the opportunity to meet a newly minted chief compliance officer. She had been in the job only one month, was passing through town, and wanted to talk about the current events in compliance over lunch. We settled into a restaurant near my office and began chatting. “So are you a […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: SOX Gets Defeated, and That’s It?
Many years ago, T.S. Eliot closed his poem “The Hollow Men” with this famous, haunting stanza: “This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.” Much to my amazement, those lines came to mind while I was digesting denouement […]
Posted inTechnology
Putting Wiki-Leaks in Perspective (Gulp)
The reporter in me is fascinated by the ongoing story of Wiki-leaks, and its decision to post online 76,000 classified or otherwise secret documents about the U.S. war in Afghanistan—mostly because I no idea that our messy situation in Afghanistan was, you know, news. Nevertheless, Wiki-leaks made a gigantic splash by sharing those documents with […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Compliance Week Comes to Seattle!
Attention compliance and financial reporting executives in the Pacific Northwest: Compliance Week will be hosting its next editorial roundtable in Seattle in early September, to talk about how companies are handling new requirements for proxy disclosure—risk management, climate change, executive compensation details, and everything in between. Joining us to co-host the discussion will be Colleen […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
What the SEC Might Be Asking in Its Repo 105 Probe
Remember that investigation into repurchase agreements the Securities and Exchange Commission launched earlier this year? The SEC wanted banks and other financial institutions to step forward and explain how they were using “repo 105” deals, one of several accounting contraptions that put Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy in 2008. We have some fresh news on that […]
