With the Nov. 15 deadline for Section 404 rapidly approaching, most corporate internal audit departments are right in the thick of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. INTERNAL AUDIT COMPARISON Below are examples of several internal audit functions at public companies, including their structure, membership and role in SOX 404 compliance: American Electric Power $14 billion utility Internal audit […]
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Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Board Composition and Corporate Fraud
Study by three academics suggests that board composition and the structure of a board’s oversight committees are “significantly correlated with the incidence of corporate fraud.”
Posted inEthics & Culture
Editorial: Stock Options Can Get Everyone Focused On The Wrong Things
38 years ago, my dad founded a media buying agency in Chicago. I used to crash the place when I was a kid. On weekends in the early fall before school had started—provided there wasn’t a Northwestern University football game to catch—my brother and I used to go downtown with him for the day. There […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
$27.4m Harken Energy Loses Auditor, Gains Material Weakness
Texas-based oil and gas company Harken Energy was informed last week by its outgoing auditor, BDO Seidman, of a material weakness in its accounting system. According to an SEC filing, the weakness relates to an “inability to determine the appropriate accounting for non-routine securities transactions on a timely basis.” Harken’s audit committee hired an independent […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Individual Trading Plans Can Help Defend Securities Fraud Claims
As the indictments, trials, and convictions of executives continue to fill the headlines, the focus on corporate scandals that followed the collapse of Enron and the overall stock market shows little sign of dissipating. The federal government continues to increase its scrutiny of public companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission was recently awarded a substantial […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Comptroller General Supports FASB Expensing Proposal
In a recent letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker expressed his support for the Board’s proposal requiring companies to expense the cost of stock options. A copy of the letter was sent to two of the senior Senate Banking Committee members, Senators Paul Sarbanes and Richard Shelby, both of […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Practical Guidance On Being Worth One’s “Salt”
The late President Reagan articulated the hope that “people on Wall Street would pay attention to people on Main Street.” This optative was sage when uttered, and remains so even after so many years have passed. And nowhere is this truer than in the area of executive compensation, where Wall Street is learning—sometimes painfully—to understand […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Corporate Governance, Corporate Ownership And The Role of Institutional Investors
Academic paper from the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware examines the relationship between corporate governance and ownership structure, focusing on the role of institutional investors.
Posted inFrom the Archive
Explaining Corporate Governance: Boards, Bylaws, and Charter Provisions
Academic paper from the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware describes how an industry’s particular characteristics help explain its corporate governance.
Posted inFrom the Archive
FASB And SEC Hint At Option Expensing Delay
Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Accounting Standards Board hinted last week that the proposal to expense options may be delayed. The first comments came from SEC Chief Accountant Donald Nicolaisen, who said last week that he was open to the idea of giving companies another year before they would have to […]
