All Compliance Week articles in Web Issue – Page 671
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Blog
Pres. Obama Nominates Fairfax, Peirce as SEC Commissioners
This week, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Lisa Fairfax, currently a law professor at the George Washington University Law School, and Hester Peirce, a senior research fellow at the Financial Markets Working Group at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, as SEC commissioners. If confirmed, Fairfax and Peirce will ...
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Article
Dueling Views on SEC Enforcement
Image: A chronic dilemma for the SEC Enforcement Division is how best to focus its efforts given resource constraints. Enforcement Director Andrew Ceresney had to answer for how those decisions are made during a meeting of the Investment Advisory Committee last week. Despite calls to abolish the “broken windows” approach, ...
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Insurance Companies Face New Scrutiny and Bank-Like Regulation
Image: Insurance firms are in an identity crisis these days: Regulators are treating them like banks. While insurers are trying to resist that, regulators themselves still struggle with how to make sense of the global jumble of rules, requirements, and risk generated by large firms. “There are a lot of ...
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Blog
'You Know What's Cool? A Billion Dollars,' Part III
Yes, the Madoff trustee's legal and professional fees have passed the $1 billion mark, but with the release today of more good news for Madoff victims, the trustee says that this $1 billion (and counting!) is a “very good return on an investment.”
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Article
Hosting a Related-Party Transaction About to Get Much Harder
Image: Companies preparing year-end financial disclosures, beware: Auditors will be poring over related-party transactions to make sure those parties don’t get too wild. The new Audit Standard 18 pushed auditors to be more skeptical about transactions, so expect them to push you (and your audit committee) to be more diligent ...
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Article
Hosting a Related-Party Transaction About to Get Much Harder
Image: Companies preparing year-end financial disclosures, beware: Auditors will be poring over related-party transactions to make sure those parties don’t get too wild. The new Audit Standard 18 pushed auditors to be more skeptical about transactions, so expect them to push you (and your audit committee) to be more diligent ...
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Blog
Microsoft Proposes Two Board Nominations
Microsoft this week announced two nominations to its board of directors: Sandra Peterson, group worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson, and member of the executive committee, and Padmasree Warrior, former chief strategy officer and chief technology officer at Cisco. Both will be presented for election at the company's annual shareholders ...
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Blog
So You Want To Be a Board Member
Being a director of a major company is a pretty good gig. It brings prestige, challenge, and financial reward—but also stress, time commitment, and even legal liability. This month, columnist Rick Steinberg talks about how executives (including compliance officers, with a skill set rapidly growing more important) can get invited ...
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Blog
Countering the Effects of Unconscious Bias in Audits
Audits go wrong for many reasons, so let’s not deny one of them: because auditors sometimes unconsciously give the benefit of the doubt to a client when they should not. What unconscious biases put effective auditing at risk? How can an auditor train himself to find them, or construct practices ...
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Blog
Arctic Cat Elects New Board Member
Arctic Cat, a company that makes recreational vehicles, has elected Andrew Duff, chairman and CEO of investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffray Companies, to its board of directors. He also will serve on Arctic Cat’s audit committee. More inside.
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Blog
Accuity Launches Next Generation Dual-Use Goods Screening Solution
Accuity, a global provider of risk and compliance, payments and know-your-customer solutions, has launched a new screening solution to help companies tackle the emerging requirement to identify dual-use and controlled goods in trade. More inside.
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Article
Global Tax Overhaul Moves Forward
Slowly but surely, developed nations are closing ranks on an international tax agreement intended to crack down global companies parking profits in low-tax jurisdictions. The OECD issued its final recommendations, Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan, earlier this month, which G-20 countries will then implement locally. Nice idea in ...
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Article
New U.K. Law Introduces U.S.-Style Class Actions
Image: A change in British law is bringing American-style class-action lawsuits in cases where companies violate competition laws—something U.S. companies operating in Britain should keep in mind when implementing strategies to reduce antitrust risks. “It’s anticipated that there will be a lot more litigation in English courts going forward because ...
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Blog
Millennium Health to Pay $256 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Case
Millennium Health (formerly Millennium Laboratories) today reached a $256 million settlement with the Justice Department to resolve allegations that it billed for Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs for medically unnecessary urine drug and genetic testing and for providing free items to physicians who agreed to refer expensive ...
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Blog
Tuomey Healthcare System to Pay $72 Million in False Claims Act Case
The Department of Justice announced last week that it has resolved a $237 million judgement against Tuomey Healthcare System to for illegally billing the Medicare program for services referred by physicians with whom the hospital had improper financial relationships. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the United States will ...
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Blog
ICon Professional Services and Synergy Services Join Forces
In the face of rapid and tremendous change on the horizon for the independent workforce landscape, ICon Professional Services, a provider of contingent workforce management solutions, and Synergy Services, a provider of technology-enabled services for today’s global workforce, today announced that they have combined forces. Details inside.
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Blog
Former Boeing CFO Joins Apple Board
Apple this month announced that James Bell, former chief financial officer and corporate president of The Boeing Company, has been elected to Apple’s board of directors. More inside.
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Blog
SEC's Investor Advocate Slams NYSE Rule Change
For the first time, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Investor Advocate is urging the rejection of a rule proposal. The New York Stock Exchange wants to exempt early stage companies from obtaining shareholder approval before selling additional shares to insiders and other related parties. Rick Fleming, the ...
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Blog
Sticky Situation: Ill-Gotten Gains From FCPA Violations
Image: One of the continuing myths around FCPA enforcement is so-called “springing liability,” where a company that acquires a business also acquires a FCPA violation along with the purchase. That is not an accurate understanding of the issue, our anti-corruption blogger Tom Fox writes. But it does touch on issues ...