Appointment Blogs | Compliance Week – Page 272
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Employee or Independent Contractor? Labor Department Weighs In
Image: The Labor Department issued new guidance on how companies should distinguish between employees and independent contractors. “The main difference between the new interpretation and the Labor Department’s prior enforcement policy is a greater emphasis on the ‘economic dependence’ of the workers on the business that has engaged their services,” ...
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Sherwin-Williams Elects New Director
Paint company Sherwin-Williams has elected Steven Wunning to its board of directors, effective as of July 15. He also was appointed to the compensation and management development committee. Details inside.
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OGE Energy Appoints New Board Member
OGE Energy has appointed David Hauser to the company's board of directors and as member of its audit committee, effective as of July 15. The company also announced the retirement of Robert Kelley, who has served as a director since 1996. Details inside.
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U.S. Chamber: 28 Recommendations on SEC Enforcement Practices
Today the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released an interesting, 64-page paper entitled, "Examining U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement: Recommendations on Current Processes and Practices." The report offers 28 specific recommendations on how to improve the SEC enforcement process.
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Two More Banks Reach Agreements Under Swiss Bank Program
The Department of Justice last week announced that two more banks— Banque Pasche and ARVEST Privatbank —have reached resolutions under the Department’s Swiss Bank Program, which provides a means for Swiss banks to resolve potential criminal liabilities in the United States. Banque Pasche will pay a $7.2 million penalty, and ...
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White: SEC Enforcement Not Targeting Compliance Professionals
Image: The message from SEC Chairman Mary Jo White to compliance officers: They are not the target of enforcement efforts. Speaking to 1,000 compliance officers from financial services firms and broker-dealers at a Commission-sponsored forum, White said, “We do not bring cases based on second guessing compliance officers’ good faith ...
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Accounting Scandal Takes Down Toshiba’s Head Honcho
Image: Hisao Tanaka, chief executive of Toshiba Corp., is expected to step down in September in light of accounting missteps at the Japanese conglomerate. The domino effect will continue as key board members are rumored to be leaving over the next few months. News reports indicate that top executives ...
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Citi Elects Non-Executive Director
Citi has elected Eugene McQuade as a new non-executive director, effective immediately. McQuade is former chief executive officer of Citibank N.A. and former vice chairman of Citigroup. Details inside.
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Ireland’s Regulatory Body Yet to Investigate Bloxham Accounting Practices
Since 2012, now-defunct Bloxham Stockbrokers, Ireland’s oldest stockbroker, halted all trading activities amid a Central Bank investigation, which uncovered a €5.3 million gap in its accounts. Ireland’s regulatory body, the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board, has yet to investigate the firm’s accounting practices. In May, the Central Bank banned the company’s ...
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FASB Nears Proposal on Hedge Accounting
After several years of relative inaction on hedge accounting, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is near issuing a proposed update to accounting standards that would have a big effect on what would qualify for hedge accounting and how the accounting would be explained in financial statements. According to PwC, “[t]he ...
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Survey: Global Regulations Cost Some Financial Firms $500 Million
More than half of large financial services firms with more than $40 billion in assets expect to invest at least $200 million—and some as much as $500 million—on projects to overhaul how they do business and address global structural reform regulations this year, according to a survey from global consultancy ...
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Investor Advocates Want SEC to Create National Broker Database
A coalition of investor advocacy groups, including Public Citizen, the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association, and the PIABA Foundation, is calling upon the SEC to supplement the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck system for vetting financial professionals with a national disciplinary database and to make improvements to the existing ...
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Breaking Risk Management Down to Manageable Size
Effective risk management may seem daunting, and many companies say they fell victim to misconduct because nobody ever considered whatever risk event came to pass. The reality, Compliance Week columnist Rick Steinberg writes, is that many risks have happened before, and companies can anticipate them. Inside, he reviews the building ...
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SEC Chair White Responds to Sen. Warren’s ‘Disappointment’
In response to a lengthy list of grievances laid out by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in early June 2015, SEC Chair Mary Jo White has answered the Senator’s complaints. Specifically, White explained her recusals from certain cases (she had been granted permission to be recused from certain cases for two years), ...
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New York Power Authority Names Chief Risk Officer
The New York Power Authority has named Soubhagya Parija as chief risk officer to administer all aspects of risk management and insurance at the state public power organization. Parija joins NYPA from Walmart, where he was a director and oversaw the global compliance risk strategy for the retail giant’s operations ...
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The Overlooked Lessons of PetroTiger Trial
The corruption trials against three former executives of PetroTiger ended with a whimper in June, when the last defendant pled guilty to FCPA violations. Contrary to what many say, however, the PetroTiger case offered some valuable—and good—news for compliance officers. This week, columnist Tom Fox reviews how the company avoided ...
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Appeals Court Opinion Sheds Light on Excluding Proxy Proposals
A newly released opinion from a federal appeals court sheds light on why Walmart was allowed to reject a shareholder proposal calling for a board review of its policies regarding the sale of high-capacity firearms. The opinion could provide a blueprint for future courts weighing in on the SEC’s traditional ...
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EU Regulator Charges MasterCard Amid Breach of Antitrust Rules
Image: MasterCard is once again in the spotlight, as the European Commission has swooped in on the company’s potential abuse of interchange fees. After a two-year investigation, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said, “MasterCard is artificially raising the costs of card payments, which would harm consumers and retailers in the European ...
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New Zealand to Extend AML Efforts
In a keynote speech today at the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering in Auckland, New Zealand's Justice Minister Amy Adams said the government has begun preliminary work to extend anti-money laundering compliance obligations on more professions and companies, including lawyers, accountants, and businesses that deal in high-value goods, subjecting ...
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‘The U.K. Bribery Act After Five Years — Where Are We Now?’
On the eve of the anniversary of the U.K. Bribery Act of 2010, CW columnist Bruce Carton hosted a panel of U.K. experts to address where the SFO stands in its enforcement and prosecution of the Bribery Act, as well as other key issues such as the introduction of deferred ...