If you’re looking for a reason to pay a visit to our nation’s capital later this spring, Compliance Week has just what you need. You may already know that every June, we host an annual conference in Washington, D.C. At the event, which always takes place at the historic and stately Mayflower Hotel, several hundred […]
Matt Kelly
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: What the New Mood for M&A Says About Old Habits of Governance
M&A is in a precarious place these days. According to Thomson Financial, there were fewer worldwide mergers in January 2008 than during any month in the last three years, comprising the lowest dollar volume in any month since November 2004. Private equity-backed M&A plummeted from 19.2 percent of deals in 2007 to only 7.9 percent […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: Governance and the Sub-prime Crisis: The More You Think You Know …
I love this sub-prime mortgage mess. Every day, some new dimension to the crisis emerges and drags yet another corporate governance failure into the harsh light. All of America is whirling in a vortex of unhappy shareholders, fired CEOs, sputtering congressmen, strangely named financial instruments, and, of course, lawyers. For purveyors of news about risk […]
Posted inTechnology
SEC Has Big Plans for XBRL in 2008
The XBRL community is gearing up for a full-court press to push the new technology into the financial reporting mainstream next year. Starting in January, the Securities and Exchange Commission will hold a series of forums to explore whether it should mandate use of the data language by the end of 2008. At the same […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: Of IFRS, XBRL, and the Global Market Forces Hurtling This Way
There’s no doubt about it: Financial reporting is going global. You might want to brush up on your French and your XBRL. Several weeks ago, I experienced this firsthand, at a one-day conference in New York that addressed the effort to converge International Financial Reporting Standards and U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The event was […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: At The Intersection Of Business Discontinuity And Sustainability
We don’t write much about business continuity here at Compliance Week. It’s an important part of corporate governance, certainly, but it’s also not typically as vital to our readers as reliable financial reporting, or the recent uptick in FCPA enforcement activity, or emerging accounting standards. (Can you say, “FIN 48?”?) Frankly, business continuity is one […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: Internal Control Guidance Arrives And New Set Of Questions Emerge
For all of you accounting and financial reporting types waiting for the other shoe to drop: consider it done. Since last summer, when the Securities and Exchange Commission promised a kinder, gentler (read: cheaper, easier) version of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we have all eagerly waited for said guidance to appear. All this […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
Applying A Risk-Based Approach
Four top audit executives at large companies shared their thoughts Wednesday afternoon at Compliance Week 2007 on how their organizations embraced a more risk-based approach to auditing their internal controls for financial reporting. Foremost on their minds: effective risk assessments, strong processes to certify risks and controls, and how to reduce the menial testing of […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: It’s All In The Proxy Statement: The Next Compliance Challenge
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to relax at a poolside bar in sunny Los Angeles, pondering the problems of being paid large sums of money. As one might imagine, this was one of my more enjoyable days on the job. The occasion was a two-day conference at the University of Southern California to […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Editorial: Pondering The Mechanics Of Fraud With Your Obsessed Internal Auditors
In my line of work, I regularly encounter professionals who are just a bit too obsessed about topics that are just a bit too obscure for the rest of the world. Take, for example, the mechanics of how employees foist a fraud on their corporations. I’m not talking here about the broad conceptual approaches to […]