Regulatory Enforcement

Companies that take a no-nonsense approach to ethical guidelines and enforcing compliance with them suffer fewer economic crimes than other companies, a new survey suggests. The “Global Economic Crime Survey,” published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and encompassing 5,400 companies in 40 nations, showed that such programs had a significant effect on a company’s vulnerability in all areas […]

A rare event in class-action securities litigation is currently unfolding in California: an actual securities litigation trial. The lawsuit, JDS Uniphase Securities Litigation, is being heard in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Filed by the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, it claims that JDS Uniphase executives unloaded stock worth hundreds of millions from April […]

In a column at the start of the year, I contended that auditing records management programs should be one of your top dozen priorities for 2007. This month’s column explores that important subject in more detail. Auditing a records management program in many ways should follow the traditional program audit. To wit, review the program’s […]

Thanks at least partly to a stable economy, U.S. companies faced fewer lawsuits in the past year and filed slightly fewer themselves, a recent survey shows. In fact, 17 percent of domestic companies said they sailed through the past 12 months with no new lawsuits filed against them, up from 11 percent in 2005-06, according […]

Amid a flurry of recent enforcement actions, stiff fines and painful public scoldings, prosecutors recently settled a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act case that demonstrates self-disclosure of such offenses can indeed bring some benefits to a company. The case involves a Dutch software company, Paradigm, that caters to the oil and gas industry. After the company […]

The problem of departing employees taking electronic data with them when they leave has troubled companies for more than a decade. A recent court decision now gives them another weapon to seek a remedy for the theft of electronic and other intangible data. The decision—Thyroff v. Nationwide Mutual, made by the New York Court of […]

The Justice Department has released new guidance to help companies understand how they can host foreign officials without running afoul of the anti-bribery Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The guidance is in the form of two “opinion procedure releases” that address the propriety of promotional expenditures such as travel, gifts, and entertainment associated with hosting foreign […]

A new report finds that despite the growing importance of records management to prevent snafus in corporate litigation, only one-third of companies believe they have a comprehensive records management program. The 2007 Iron Mountain Compliance Benchmark Report surveyed nearly 2,000 people at public, private, government, and nonprofit organizations. Only 35 percent of respondents said they […]

Six years after its implosion, Enron continues to remind Corporate America of its legacy in a number of ways. Add the steady rise of pretrial diversion agreements to that list. While so-called deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements existed before the executives at Enron Corp. cooked up their massive accounting fraud, the rapid demise of Arthur […]

It took European regulators nine years to win their titanic antitrust battle against Microsoft. Other companies are likely to feel the implications a lot more quickly. Legal experts say the rebuke of Microsoft by the European Court of First Instance (the second-highest court in the European Union) is a resounding victory for the European Commission. […]