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At the heart of a $475 million lawsuit that investors in 19 countries have brought against Denmark’s largest bank is a lesson for legal departments regarding the importance of compliance and disclosure. “You need to take regulatory compliance very seriously and when you do have problems don’t cover it up. That will only turn it into […]
Some people believe that a formal enforcement action is the obvious response to every compliance infraction. In my view, a better approach is to build certain norms into the industry that foster compliance. Hitting someone over the head with a criminal conviction is a sure way to scare all trick-or-treaters, even those not breaking the […]
Compiling a list of thought leaders in ethics and compliance is fun, but so challenging. There are simply too many thoughtful people in this field — which is itself enormous and wide-ranging — to call out everyone worth following. So below is a small slice of the thinkers in corporate ethics and compliance that I […]
The bigger picture is less encouraging. Despite a cascade of rules, regulations and record-breaking fines, that spending — an additional 5 billion pounds ($7 billion) a year in the U.K. alone — has barely moved the needle. Gauging success in this area may not be an exact science, but if catching dirty money is a […]
Back in 2011, over a with dinner Howard Sklar, we talked about commentary on the FCPA and in the greater compliance community. That conversation led us to begin the original This Week in FCPA podcast. Howard later went off to the corporate world but I continued our podcasting tradition founding the FCPA Compliance Report in […]
Despite compliance’s reputation as a buzzkill profession, its status rose during the Obama Administration. Regulations implemented after the financial crisis created a need for internal watchdogs, as did the concern raised by prosecutions of banks and hedge funds for mortgage fraud, currency-market rigging, and insider trading. In 2014, the Wall Street Journal went so far […]
All of this leads me to conclude the DOJ (as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)) want to see compliance moved out into the business. This means that Chief Compliance Officers (CCO’s) will need to move past the thinking that simply having a compliance program will be enough to make compliance effective. You […]
A disturbing video of a Chinese bank’s effort to improve employee performance — through public, violent spankings of employees — was posted yesterday in a BBC article. The video, which will make even the most hardened U.S. compliance officer cringe, shows a line of employees from Changzhi Rural Commercial Bank being subjected to an awful “team-building” workshop in […]
Judging from a report released Monday, corporate compliance officers (CCOs) and in-house corporate counsel are unnerved, to say the least, about the specter of heightened scrutiny. Among 78 such people who responded to a survey by law firm DLA Piper, 80% were at least somewhat concerned about the change in tone and tactics from Washington. […]
The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled charges against Texas-based oil company Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation and several individuals, including a company consultant, for deficient evaluation of the company’s internal controls over financial reporting, and failures to maintain internal control over financial reporting between Dec. 31, 2011 and Sept. 30, 2013. via SEC Charges Company […]