Articles | Compliance Week – Page 279
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Article
Mitigating auditor liability
Image: Audit committee and external auditors who fail to reasonably carry out their responsibilities increasingly are finding themselves in the crosshairs of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Over the past few years, the staff has really put a lot of focus into financial reporting and auditing enforcement matters. That means ...
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ArticleNASDAQ rule could tug on the ‘golden leash’ of activist directors
So-called “golden leash” arrangements occur when activist shareholders—typically hedge funds—pay a director or board nominee in connection with their service. Calling them “one area where investors may not have complete information,” NASDAQ submitted a rule proposal to the SEC that would require listed companies to disclose these arrangements. A more ...
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SEC, CFTC ‘milestones’ resolve issues with cross-border swaps deals
Consider it regulatory kismet. Independently, on Feb. 10, the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission finalized long-lingering rules and agreements needed to resolve concerns with the international marketplace for derivatives deals. The SEC’s new rules cover foreign swaps dealers who maintain trading desks in the United States, closing a perceived ...
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Regulating the way to equal pay
Image: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission this month proposed two controversial pay equity reporting requirements that effectively would impose burdensome new compensation collection obligations on companies with at least 100 employees, and federal contractors with at least 50 employees, starting in 2017. “This information will assist employers in evaluating their ...
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ArticlePreventing a payment card hack
Point of sales systems are the weak link in the chain when it comes to retail cyber-security. Recent data breaches at a number of prominent companies—including three in January alone—highlight the ever-increasing stakes for any organization responsible for handling customer data. Increasingly this is an issue that a strong compliance ...
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Article
The new VIE evaluation process is here, but what does it really change?
Image: With yet another change in the guidance on when a company needs to consolidate a particular entity onto its balance sheet, all public companies need to walk through a new evaluation process in the first quarter, even if it doesn’t change the outcome. “It is a thicket,” says Adam ...
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Article
Data collection could be key to battling trade-based money laundering
Trade-based money laundering is a common technique for funding terrorist activities through seemingly innocuous trade activity that essentially hides criminal transactions in plain sight. And it will take the combined efforts of U.S. Customs, FinCEN, the Department of Commerce, and port authorities (and their counterparts in other countries) to compile ...
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Article
Fiduciary duty rules poised to redefine an industry
It sounds reasonable enough: hold broker-dealers and investment advisers to a fiduciary standard when they offer investment advice, specifically with retirement plans. Firms, however, fear that pending rules, split between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Labor, are not in sync and unintended consequences will radically alter traditional ...
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Article
Mitigating export control violations
Image: The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security is considering proposed rules that, on the one hand, would significantly raise the stakes for companies that run afoul of export control regulations but, on the other hand, bring greater transparency to the enforcement process. “The guidelines generally provide ...
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ArticleAssessing risks country-by-country
A new Transparency International report examining public sector corruption reveals both good news and bad news: More countries saw their anti-corruption scores improve, rather than decline—but corruption, overall, is still rife globally. Compliance and risk officers can use the benchmark to help reassess where to focus their due diligence and ...
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Debate continues over the practice of quarterly reporting
Amid discussion about reforms to the SEC’s disclosure regime, perhaps no idea is as controversial as the rethinking of how frequently companies must disclose financial information. While it may seem a cornerstone of public filings, quarterly 10-Q financial statements have only been an SEC requirement since 1970. There’s now a ...
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Article
Revenue recognition: full retrospective, modified retrospective, or somewhere in-between
Companies looking to implement the new revenue standard are faced with the difficult choice of going full retrospective, modified retrospective, or somewhere in-between. Those at the forefront of implementing the standard are starting to favor the idea of presenting three complete years of historical data under the new rules, but ...
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Article
OCC will add "recovery plans" alongside big bank stress tests
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is seeking comment on “enforceable guidance” that will require banks with assets of $50 billion or more to create “recovery plans.” While resolution plans, orchestrated by the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, largely focus on liquidity and asset quality, the ...
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ArticleThink the FTC Isn’t Monitoring Big Data? Think Again
Companies that use Big Data analytics will want to carefully review a new report issued this month by the Federal Trade Commission, which warns companies about the sort of ethical, legal, and compliance risks they could encounter when using data analytics practices that fly in the face of consumer protection ...
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SEC Committee Ups Ante in Fight Against FASB Materiality Changes
Members of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee are ramping up their fight with FASB over proposals that redefine its approach to materiality in financial statements. The plan is “fraught with the risk that disclosures that are unfavorable to the issuer are disproportionately viewed as immaterial and as a result excluded ...
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New DoL Guidance Has Chilling Effect on Third-Party Relationships
Does your company use sub-contractors or have franchisees? Ever put a vendor compliance program in place? If so, new guidance from the Department of Labor is about to make life more complicated. It broadens how joint employer relationships—where two or more companies cooperatively employ workers—will be defined and applied under ...
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Companies Prep for FASB’s New Take on Leases
Still knee-deep in preparing for the massive new revenue recognition standard, public companies have plenty of reason to start revving up now for another major accounting change on the horizon—the new leasing standard. “As soon as possible—even prior to the issuance of the new leases standard—preparers should consider creating a ...
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Article
Preparing for the EU’s new Data Protection Rule
Sweeping changes to the EU’s data protection laws means new compliance headaches for any U.S. company that collects and handles data on citizens of the European Union. “It’s a game changer, primarily because it sets standards that many companies haven’t had to worry about,” said Hilary Wandall, associate vice president ...
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Top Five Ethics and Compliance Failures of 2015
Same story, different year: pressure from senior leaders, a laissez-faire attitude toward bribery and corruption, and middle managers that neither practice nor value a robust culture of ethics and compliance all resulted in some of the biggest corporate faux pas of 2015. Inside is Compliance Week’s list of the top ...
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Liability Protections Included in New Cyber-Security Law
You may have not even noticed it, but discreetly tucked into the massive omnibus spending bill signed into law last month is a provision that effectively makes it safer for companies to share cyber-threat information with one another—but critics argue the bill doesn’t go far enough to ease privacy concerns.