Matt Kelly

Foolish me—I’ve always thought the phrase “fraud risk in emerging markets” referred to some two-bit shyster in a foreign land, rushing out from his flimsy storefront operation to seduce a clueless U.S. business partner. Little did I know that the phrase also includes Satyam, the (supposedly) $2.6 billion IT services business that had been a […]

Compliance Week and Integrity Interactive will be hosting an editorial roundtable later this month to talk about supply chain compliance issues. Executives at public companies who oversee this sort of thing—and anyone doubting the importance of the subject, think about milk imported from China or Boeing’s Dreamliner jet delayed because of bad rivets—should contact us […]

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act arrived in 2002, and suddenly compliance executives were thrust into “the post-SOX era.” We all know that era wasn’t exactly fun, and most of Corporate America has wished sometime in the last six years that a new era would come along to replace the old. Well, you have your wish. Welcome to […]

I’ve always thought that Barack Obama really clinched the White House during the third presidential debate—you know, the one starring Obama, John McCain, and Joe the Plumber. Obama impressed me during that debate for all the usual reasons: his well-thought and well-articulated policies, his clarity, his demeanor. But above all I was impressed with how […]

President-elect Barack Obama presented his economic team to the world this week. A new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commissioner was not part of the picture. That says a lot. For the record, I applaud the nominees Obama presented on Monday: Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary; Larry Summers as chairman of the National Economic […]

From the I’d-rather-watch-paint-dry department: That conservative outfit still arguing that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is unconstitutional has, yet again, lost a court dispute and vowed to appeal. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., voted 5-4 not to review the case, which argues that the structure of the Public Company Accounting Oversight […]

Corporate America had its first glimpse into the Obama Administration’s thinking yesterday with the news that Eric Holder, a partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling, will be nominated to be our next attorney general. Sure, we’re still in the rumor phase of this news, but the Obama team hasn’t made any mistakes […]

One bit of political flotsam flushed away in last night’s blue deluge: U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney of Florida. Feeney, a three-term Republican from central Florida, has been an outspoken critic of Sarbanes-Oxley and specifically of applying its notorious Section 404 provisions to small companies. Well, he lost last night. Democrat Suzanne Kosmas drubbed him out […]

Originally I planned to write in this space about the vacation to China I took back in September. I had dreams of portraying China as a great nation with even greater potential, and then shredding the illusion that China’s governance is anywhere near what the West expects it to be. Well, shredding another nation’s governance […]