Last week, a U.S. Department of Labor administrative law judge ruled that Atlantic Coast Airlines must compensate a former employee after she was fired for blowing the whistle on alleged fraud. The employee, former labor relations manager Stacey Platone, had alleged that some members of the pilots’ union were abusing “flight loss pay,” wherein pilots […]
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Posted inFrom the Archive
CSR Reporting To Be Required For UK Companies
Last week, the UK government published its long-awaited proposal for a mandatory “Operating and Financial Review,” which would require approximately 1,290 companies to disclose—among other things—information about environmental, social and community issues that could be important for investors when assessing the company. Company directors will need to decide what information should be included in the […]
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
First Accounting Firm Gets Rejected By Oversight Board
Last week, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rejected its first audit firm, announcing it had “disapproved” the application of James C. Marshall PC. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm will no longer be able to audit public company clients. According to the PCAOB’s notice, Marshall failed to respond to deficiencies identified in its audit work, and […]
Posted inTechnology
Internal Control Software Firms Name Additional Clients
Nth Orbit recently announced that $3.2 billion beverage bottler PepsiAmericas and $34.7 million semiconductor equipment company AXT will use the company’s Certus software for their SOX 404 compliance efforts. Over $1 billion is expected to be spent on SOX-compliance technologies this year, according to AMR research. Durkin According to PepsiAmericas EVP and CFO Michael Durkin, […]
Posted inBoards & Shareholders
Proxy Access: Not So Fast
It’s beginning to look like the SEC will trot out its final rules regarding proxy access a little later than experts had anticipated. For awhile, there was talk that it would come sometime in May, after being delayed once earlier in the year. However, this timetable does not appear to be materializing. According to an […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
Don’t Stop When You Comply With FASB Options Standard
This is Part One of a two-part series written by Miller and Bahnson. Part Two appeared in the May 18 edition of Compliance Week. On March 31, amid much fanfare—both cheers and jeers—the FASB finally issued its long-awaited exposure draft of a new standard that would mandate recognizing an expense when stock options are granted. […]
Posted inInternal Controls
39 Internal Control Disclosures In April
According to a review of regulatory filings during the month of April, 39 companies disclosed material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls, or provided updates on the status of their control-improvement processes. That number is up from 28 similar disclosures in March, 18 in February, and 23 in January. (See box at right for […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
President Of $41.4b Dell Discusses Impact Of Legislation
Dell President and COO Kevin Rollins discussed the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley at an American Enterprise Institute event.
Posted inFrom the Archive
$9.8b Nortel Replaces President, CFO And Controller
Out: DunnIn: Owens Canada-based telecommunications equipment company Nortel, currently the subject of a formal SEC investigation into its accounting practices, announced several top management changes last week, and noted it would restate 2003 earnings downward by 50 percent. According to a Nortel press release, President and CEO Frank Dunn, CFO Doug Beatty, and Controller Michael […]
Posted inFrom the Archive
A Conversation With UTC’s VP Business Controls
Today Compliance Week begins the first of an ongoing series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. Our first conversation is with Jay Haberland, vice president of business controls at $30.7 billion United Technologies Corp., who describes the type of internal control testing […]