Scott S. Cohen

Welcome to the new Compliance Week. Expanded and redesigned at the request of subscribers, Compliance Week now offers a host of new features and improved offerings. Among our most notable changes are the following: NEW FEATURES Resource Exchange (Share Policies, Checklists, More) Thought Leadership (Legal, Accounting Firm Guidance) New Blogs (Bruce Carton, CW Editor Matt […]

When I founded Compliance Week with my business partner Frank Hertz, we never dreamed that compliance would get so big or complex. Clearly, risk and compliance issues were becoming increasingly important—our coverage went from focusing on Regulation Fair Disclosure (remember the days when that was the big compliance issue?) to Sarbanes-Oxley faster than you could […]

My little brother was always a much better athlete than me. This used to drive me absolutely crazy. No matter what the sport—football, basketball, baseball—he could always outrun, outshoot, and outswing me. This wasn’t because I had no game; it was simply because the little pipsqueak was tough as nails, athletically gifted, and imbued with […]

I’m addicted to “Mike and Mike in the Morning.” I can’t help it. It’s hilarious. The morning sports banter on the nationally syndicated ESPN radio talk show is truly best-in-class. It matches Mike Golic—an overweight, crotchety, Twinkie-eating, conservative, Catholic, former Notre Dame football captain and nine-year NFL defensive tackle—against Mike “Greeny” Greenberg—a liberal, Jewish, Ivy […]

I am so sick of Gretchen Morgenson’s incessant whining in The New York Times’ Sunday Business section that I’m ready to poke my eyes out with some of the paper’s advertising circulars. The Times‘ Sunday business section has always been “The Anti-Business Section,” employing the Times’ predictable, anti-establishment, “go underdog!” directives: Businesses are evil, executives […]

As Compliance Week has reported for the last two weeks, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox has publicly criticized companies for making their Compensation Discussion and Analysis disclosures too dense, “over-lawyered,” and not in plain English. Cox And he’s not alone; a few weeks ago, the investor-communications Web site IRWebReport.com ran 40 CD&As through three online “readability” […]

Every Thursday, Compliance Week invites readers, pundits, academics, advertisers, governance gurus, and other GRC players into our office in Boston. The conversations are informal, one-hour sessions from 9 a.m. to noon, which typically yield back-to-back-to-back sessions, separated only by coffee refills and bio breaks. (You should schedule a briefing and come in, if you haven’t […]

Managers of pension funds and hedge fund lords and jesters, holders of our bonds and debts, retirees, and investors: Gather round and hear our tale of scarcity, salvation, destitute inservitude, and scant remuneration. `Twas a time in distant year when most of our confessions lay beneath a footnote heap concealing our transgressions. Now the dreaded […]

I love reading comment letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission. What can I say? I get a kick out of it—it’s a great opportunity to understand the agendas of governance players, from institutional investors to corporate executives. It’s also hilarious. Before the SEC’s executive compensation disclosure rules were finalized, I’d spent some of my […]