Richard M. Steinberg

If you watch NFL football on ESPN, you’ve probably seen the segment “C’mon, man!” where analysts such as Mike Ditka and Chris Carter shout “C’mon, man!” after showing clips of players making particularly “boneheaded” plays—plays that are really dumb or sometimes just inept. They’re funny, sad, or frustrating, depending on which team you’re pulling for. […]

Nearly 20 years have passed since the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) published the seminal report Internal Control—Integrated Framework, which—with impetus from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002—became the authoritative document on internal control both in the United States and overseas. On a personal note, it’s hard for me to believe so […]

Boards of directors have a challenging job. They need to monitor senior management’s performance and provide advice, counsel, and, where necessary, direction. And they need to do all of this while maintaining an effective and trusted relationship with the chief executive and acting in the company’s and shareholders’ best interests. It’s a tall order. Some […]

The name is Kweku Adoboli. He works—or rather, worked—at UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank. He’s the guy UBS executives say made unauthorized investment trades that cost the bank $2.3 billion—enough to wipe out much of the bank’s profit for the entire quarter.  If the charges prove true, we can add Adoboli’s name to the likes of […]

No matter how much we believe that, like the rock band The Who sang, “we won’t get fooled again”—how many times have we all experienced a problem only to recall a similar event that should have served as a warning and prompted corrective action? Corporate America has too many instances to count where a company […]

Unless you’ve been in a remote hideaway, you’re well aware of the fiasco that hit News Corp. this summer, along with its chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and a host of other current and former executives, mostly located in London. In what is now called the “News Corp. Hacking Scandal,” British officials […]

You’re a CEO, senior manager, or board member watching your once-great company brought to its knees. You imagine yourself on the deck of the Titanic, your world coming to an end—your once confident self embarrassed in front of colleagues, competitors, friends, family, and the larger communities in which you once thrived and were held in […]

Last year, Toyota Motor Corp. effectively turned a sterling reputation for producing high-quality automobiles and a loyal customer base into a brand  associated with defective cars and failure to inform owners of life-threatening flaws with accelerators and brakes. Now Toyota has stumbled again. This time, the Japanese automaker is running out of parts, forcing plant […]

These days the business pages are crammed with news of companies that have gotten into trouble. Whether it’s allegations of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations or involvement in insider trading, there’s no shortage in claims of corporate malfeasance—substantiated or not. Directors, especially those who serve public companies, recognize their resulting exposure to reputational damage and […]