Matt Kelly

A quick read of the Obama Administration’s proposed reforms of regulatory oversight leaves you with two impressions. First, for the large majority of compliance officers and financial reporting executives out there not involved in the financial sector, little will change. You still have much bigger concerns about increasingly aggressive folks at the Justice Department and […]

It’s hip to be square: Yale University’s Millstein Center for Corporate Governance has just announced the recipients of its second annual Rising Stars of Corporate Governance awards. The prizes go to various folks under the age of 40 who have made some notable contribution to the field. Full disclosure: Yours truly won a Rising Star […]

Compliance headaches have gone global this week, from Nigeria to China. First, Royal/Dutch Shell finally blinked and settled a civil lawsuit against the company about to start in New York. Relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian civil-rights activist hanged by authorities there in 1995, had sued Shell under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act for […]

Just a few random thoughts jotted down after a whirlwind three days last week… Are budgets really that bad? I’ve been assuming for nearly a year that budget increases and job openings went out of style with Bear Stearns. Imagine my surprise, then, at one gathering of about 15 chief compliance officers and two Justice […]

Compliance Week’s annual conference happens in Washington, D.C., this week, and promises to be an information-packed event as usual. This is always my favorite week of the year—not just because the bar in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel is legendary (although that helps), but also because this conference is the central way-station where those […]

To the best of my knowledge, XBRL has no tag for “disinterest.” That’s unfortunate, since it seems to be the adjective that best fits the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission these days. Yes, large U.S. companies must begin filing financial statements tagged in XBRL technology starting June 15. Yes, that’s because the SEC approved an […]

Well, it no longer matters whether you’re ready for the new compliance and corporate governance challenges we’ve all been waiting for. They’re here. Every month I try to write a small essay on this page about some significant topic mentioned in these pages. At first I was stuck for what to say this time around, […]

All right, we’re going to say it: Occasionally prosecutors go overboard. This is a big admission for Compliance Week, because like good reporters everywhere, we tend to be cynical people. When we hear the word “indicted” we assume “guilty” and wonder when the person in question will resign. Lately, however, we’ve seen two instances of […]