Articles | Compliance Week – Page 288
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PCAOB, SEC Redouble Efforts on Audit Quality
Image: The SEC and PCAOB are pushing this summer to clarify and improve “audit quality.” That might be a proposal to name the engagement partner working on corporate audits (PCAOB idea), or an exploration of new disclosure requirements for audit committees (SEC idea), or both. “I would urge commenters to ...
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All the Questions Confronting Clawback Policy
The SEC has proposed a new rule that publicly traded companies adopt a clawback policy to recoup incentive-based compensation from executives that later turns out to be based on faulty financial statements. How hard can that be? Well, pretty hard, many compensation experts say. Inside, we have the run-down on ...
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A Debt Is Owed, No Matter How You Want to Account for It
Image: Even the simplest accounting issues, it seems, can be anything but simple. Rulemakers were reminded of that recently when they tried to simplify how companies account for the cost of securing debt. “Most people get confused by it,” says Diana Gilbert of RoseRyan. “People get wrapped around the axle ...
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Confounding Hints on CCO Success
Image: Everyone knows that independent chief compliance officers make for a better compliance program, right? Um, perhaps we need to think again: New data suggests that companies with compliance reporting into the general counsel tend to be more effective. The lesson may not be one of inherent superiority, says LRN’s ...
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Advisers Still Feel Unease Over CCO Liability Risk
Image: The conversation about personal liability for compliance officers is buzzing again, thanks to a hornet’s nest SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher stirred up with a complaint about recent sanctions against two CCOs. “We’re hearing similar concerns among CCOs at investment adviser firms—and not just from CCOs, but also from senior ...
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Compliance? There Should Be an App for That!
Compliance officers talk a lot about the need to embrace new technology. This week in a guest column from Raphael Richmond, global director of compliance at Ford, we hear how her team developed a compliance app for employees, business partners, the public, and even a certain Big Auto compliance chief ...
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Drug, Device Companies Face New FDA Electronic Submissions
The Food and Drug Administration is overhauling how it accepts submissions for a host of filing requirements imposed on drug and medical device makers. For many, this will be the first time the submissions have ever been filed electronically. While the move away from paper documents may ultimately be advantageous ...
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Compliance Officers as Strategic Partners
Lots of people talk about the compliance function as crucial to business strategy today, but gaps remain: According to one PwC survey of chief executives, 78 percent of CEOs say overregulation is the top threat to growing their business; at the same time, only 35 percent of CCOs in PwC’s ...
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Smaller Companies Struggle Forward on SOX Compliance, System Investments
More grist for smaller reporting companies unhappy with your compliance burdens: A new report finds that although all businesses continue to invest in SOX compliance, smaller companies still report less benefit from the effort. Inside, we look at which parts of compliance are most troublesome for small filers (“If they ...
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In London, Compliance Officers in the Crosshairs
Recent cases in the United Kingdom suggest that prosecutors and regulators are increasingly willing to hold compliance officers personally liable as they wage war against corporate fraud. Inside, we look at the corruption charges brought by Britain’s Serious Fraud Office against Alstom SA and the Financial Conduct Authority’s case against ...
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Revisiting Financial IT for Better Monitoring, Testing, Compliance
A funny thing happened on the way to the Shangri-La of automated monitoring and testing: It didn’t happen—at least, not yet. Advanced IT to improve monitoring and testing exists, but integrating those solutions into corporate data warehouses and business operations is harder than first thought. Inside, a look at how ...
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Q&A: The Battle for Better Disclosure Data
Image: As part of our ongoing series of conversations with compliance and risk experts, we spoke with Hudson Hollister, founder and executive director, Data Transparency Coalition, a trade association pursuing the publication of government information as standardized, machine-readable data. Hollister talks about the SEC’s efforts to modernize its disclosure regime ...
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Anti-Corruption Reforms Push Forward in Mexico
Mexico has moved forward again on its quest to strengthen anti-corruption laws there, adopting reforms to clear the path for government authorities to uncover and prosecute acts of corruption committed by companies, individuals, and government officials. More legislative work is ahead, but so far Mexico’s laws might even surpass the ...
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More Banks Tying Pay to Corporate Values
More financial institutions, facing pressure from regulators and investors, are starting to tie compensation practices to ethical behavior and appropriate risk-taking—although progress has been slow. “A consistent leadership culture is necessary in which corporate values, business strategy, and formal incentives support each other,” said Jürgen Fitschen, co-chair of the group ...
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SEC Rule on Pay-for-Performance Triggers Criticism on TSR Metric
Image: The SEC’s proposed pay-for-performance rule would require companies to disclose the relationship between executive compensation and Total Shareholder Return. A simple and effective metric? Not everyone thinks so. “At first blush it’s intuitive: executives should win as shareholders win,” says Barry Sullivan of compensation consulting firm Semler Brossy. The ...
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Financial Compliance Teams Await Tech Help on Revenue Rule
Improved technology for financial systems will be critical as Corporate America moves to implement the impending new revenue recognition standard. That new tech, however, is slow-rolling its way to your data center, since the standard’s final guidance is still incomplete. “We knew going in we were not playing on a ...
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The Ever-Growing CD&A Disclosure Battles
Image: Proxy season may be winding down now, but expect a long summer of debate about disclosure of executive pay. This week Compliance Week offers a trio of articles about compensation, starting with all the new pressures on Compensation Discussion & Analysis. “There is still a bit of a push-pull, ...
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FIFA Fallout Has Banks Fearing Due Diligence Failures
The FIFA corruption scandal has pulled many banks—HSBC, Barclays, Citigroup, Bank of America—into its orbit, although none have tumbled into the black hole just yet. The case does, however, send a vivid message on the importance of enhanced due diligence processes. “It is not enough to know your customer,” says ...
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New ‘Blacklisting’ Rules Have Contractors in Uproar
Image: Uncle Sam is poised to impose sweeping new reporting obligations on government contractors to disclose labor law violations for the prior three years. Trade associations are spitting nails over the rules, but meanwhile, compliance officers have yet another reporting risk that needs process and attention. “You don’t want a ...
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ITT Complaint Shows Off-Balance-Sheet Woes Aren’t Off-Stage Yet
An SEC lawsuit against ITT Educational Services could shape up to be another textbook case of what goes wrong when companies try to deal with problematic accounting away from the eye of investors. The problem this time: off-balance sheet vehicles that masked ITT’s defaulting student loans. Where were the auditors? ...