Regulatory Enforcement

The Department of Labor has tried yet again to referee the perennial battle between activist pension funds and corporations over how far each side can push for or against shareholder resolutions. Robert Doyle, director of regulations and interpretations at the Labor Department, issued a letter last month to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce intended to […]

One year after the Justice Department pledged to curb what many perceived as strong-arm tactics to push companies to cooperate with government investigations, the practices that spawned the policy change remain alive and well, legal observers say. It was December 2006 when the department released the so-called McNulty Memo, which now requires federal prosecutors to […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission is warning Corporate America that anyone who thinks so-called “big boy” letters can protect him or her from the agency’s latest crackdown on insider trading should think again. In the last two months of 2007, two top SEC officials said either in panel discussions or speeches that, regardless of the […]

A high-profile case in the health care sector has underscored the potential exposure legal and compliance officers can face as a result of the certifications they make and serves as a sharp reminder to wield their pens with care, experts say. As regulators and enforcement authorities continue to expand the targets of their investigations beyond […]

All right, it’s now 2008. Do you know where all your data is? Unfortunately for most companies, the answer is probably no. For nearly every business, regardless of size or industry, managing the huge volumes of information that employees churn out every day is an enormous task. And according to experts, few companies have risen […]

A little more than a year after their adoption, changes to federal rules for civil litigation have provided companies some answers on how to navigate discovery in the electronic age, but they have raised just as many questions. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended on Dec. 1, 2006, aiming to help companies and […]

Corporate America is cheering a recent victory by JDS Uniphase over aggrieved shareholders in a rare class-action securities lawsuit that actually went to trial—an outcome that may embolden other companies to fight class-action lawsuits as well. The verdict was handed down Nov. 27 by a jury in federal district court in Oakland, Calif. Shareholders had […]

The Delaware Chancery Court has wedged open the door a bit more for plaintiffs in securities lawsuits to force companies to share their confidential accounting records. Zagore The ruling does not apply to all cases in the ever-important Delaware jurisdiction, but it “provides a nice overview of what Delaware allows on books and records,” says […]

A new survey says that only 7 percent of senior executives and board directors consider records management a top issue for their company—compared to a whopping 40 percent of law departments on the front lines of litigation and growing demands for speed access to relevant electronic data. The study, the Chief Legal Officer 2008 Strategic […]

A risk-based approach to testing and managing your internal controls over financial reporting sounds great, but first you need to assess just what your financial reporting risks are. To that end, Bill Stepaniuk never goes into a meeting empty handed. Or, as he likes to put it: “I’m a paper-half-full type of person.” Stepaniuk, head […]