Articles | Compliance Week – Page 286
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Taxing Times Ahead on Revenue Standard
Among the many issues companies must address as they adopt the new revenue recognition standard, tax consequences are gaining more attention. The IRS is seeking comment on how burdensome tax reporting might become, and the standard’s fundamental shift in recognizing revenue could make the burden quite heavy. “There’s a lot ...
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SEC Pushes New Limits on Cyber-Security, Securities Fraud
Another byproduct of life in the cyber-security age: The SEC is redefining insider trading to focus more on improper trading, even if you are a thief mining a company for inside information without actually working there. The misconduct—called, yes, “outsider trading”—seems to be an SEC-enforceable offense so far, and it ...
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Refresher Course on Discipline of Good Investigations
Image: The damage wrought by inept internal investigations can go well beyond wasted time and money; they can cause civil litigation, enforcement risk, and bad publicity. This week we have a refresher on principles for good internal investigations, something every compliance officer must know how to do well. “Ninety percent ...
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Small-Company Rules Inch Forward
Congress (and SEC commissioners) routinely complains that the SEC is so focused on churning out overdue rules for compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act, it has neglected to churn out overdue rules on capital formation required under the JOBS Act. In truth, the SEC is likely to move forward with what ...
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Squeezed: Banks Have No Easy Path on De-Risking
Image: Money service businesses, bitcoin startups, marijuana shops; the population of high-risk customers in the banking world is surging. Regulators have sent conflicting messages about wholesale de-risking of certain sectors, and that can force painful questions about how to build effective, and extensive, due diligence programs. “Regulators are talking from ...
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Auditing Anti-Corruption Efforts: Best Practices Take Shape
Image: More anti-corruption efforts by compliance departments means more auditing of those programs by internal audit, and a vanguard of businesses (many of them, admittedly, stung by misconduct violations in the past) are pioneering better auditing techniques on that point. Tom O’Reilly, director of internal audit at Analog Devices, says ...
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The Keys to Better Access Control Systems
Image: Gone are the days when “access control” meant locking your door or filing cabinet. Now compliance, IT, and audit teams must collaborate on controls to access networks rather than physical stores of information. Inside, we look at three best practices to design strong access control and at how to ...
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Hertz Restatement Drives Home Top-Level Control Issues
Image: Car rental kingpin Hertz Corp. is nearly finished with its sweeping restatement of several years’ worth of financial statements, and it’s giving compliance and audit executives plenty of cautionary tales to read. Its latest annual report outlines—in frank detail—more than a dozen failures, most of them in senior leadership. ...
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Four Years On, Firms Still Struggle With CFPB Compliance
What have we learned in the four years the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been on the beat? For starters, it’s aggressive, returning $10 billion so far to consumers through enforcement actions. A solid understanding of the CFPB’s compliance program expectations remains elusive, and the mood among firms in the ...
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How Comment Letters Could Shape the Pay Ratio Rule
When the SEC proposed its pay ratio disclosure rule in 2013, it included a list of nearly 60 questions for public comment. The response: 287,547 letters and counting, with plenty of ideas about dealing with foreign workforces, seasonal workers, employee exclusions, and Sarbanes-Oxley certification risks. As the final rule slouches ...
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University Compliance Programs Taking Shape
Image: Big compliance changes are afoot in higher education, as more universities hire their first enterprise-wide compliance officer—a trend that took flight in 2013 and keeps on going. “[A]cademic medical centers aside, a central compliance function is a newer concept than in the corporate world,” says Robert Roach, CCO of ...
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Q&A: How PetroTiger Avoided FCPA Prosecution
Image: As part of our occasional series of conversations with voices in the compliance world, we caught up with Timothy Treanor, a partner with law firm Sidley Austin who represented oil and gas company PetroTiger. In June, PetroTiger became just the second company in recent history of the Foreign Corrupt ...
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Firms Prepare for Heightened AML, Due Diligence Expectations
Expect an even greater focus on anti-money laundering efforts in upcoming examinations by the SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. That was the message from speakers at a “Compliance Outreach Program” the Securities and Exchange Commission hosted for financial firms last week. What’s more: New Treasury Department rules that could ...
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Extra Year on Revenue Standard Means More Time to Sweat
Image: Don’t let your accounting department get too excited with that additional year FASB has granted to adopt the new standard for revenue recognition. Experts helping companies’ implementation efforts say that extra time is much needed, with plenty of questions about the standard remaining unanswered. And don’t forget, “half of ...
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Taming Vendor Risks Continues to Flummox Compliance Programs
Image: Vendor risks driving you crazy? Well, you are not alone. In a recent survey compliance and audit professionals gave their vendor risk management programs an overall score of only 2.8 on a 1 to 5 scale. Thankfully, corporate boardrooms are paying more attention now. “It’s risen to a level ...
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Distilling Lessons From Recent Sanctions Cases
The Justice Department clearly is prosecuting more companies for sanctions or export control violations: 15 enforcement actions since 2010, compared to only three in the prior three years. Inside, we’ve sifted out themes arising from those settlements to understand more about what factors regulators weigh when resolving charges and how ...
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Product Safety Recalls Create New Breed of Compliance Concerns
Image: Automakers, airbag manufacturers, and even ice cream companies have suffered regulatory wrath over product safety concerns and inadequate recall procedures. Those in the crosshairs, especially if the Consumer Product Safety Commission is involved, are finding that their missteps can come with hefty fines and rigid compliance demands. “Companies that ...
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Mending Social Media Compliance Gaps
Two recent studies hold both good and bad news on the state of social media compliance today: Compliance officers no longer approach corporate use of social media with the trepidation they once did, but those channels leave companies increasingly vulnerable to regulatory violations. According to these studies, the financial services ...
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CFPB’s ‘UDAAP’ Approach Is an Ambiguous Compliance Concern
Image: “Unfair and deceptive practices” have long been an enforcement area for consumer protection. Now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is adding an A for “abusive”—and taking away clarity for financial firms about what its UDAAP standard exactly means. “There is no list of clear black-and-white rules, and that’s what ...
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New IIA Framework Pushes Audit Executives to Think Forward
Image: The Institute of Internal Auditors has unveiled its new professional practices framework, guidance intended to drive auditors to think more critically about risk management and organizational improvement. “It’s about making sure we understand the changes taking place in business and learning to use those to our advantage,” says Larry ...