All articles by Bill Coffin – Page 3

  • Blog

    In Brazil, accountability has to start somewhere

    2016-04-25T13:15:00Z

    The effort to unseat embattled Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff is receiving criticism because it is really an effort by her even more corrupt rivals to grab power. While that may be correct, does it matter, asks Editor Bill Coffin. Or is it just a handy excuse for giving Rousseff and ...

  • Blog

    The compliance side to Obama’s new tax incentives

    2016-04-18T09:15:00Z

    At the end of 2015, President Obama signed into law a number of federal tax incentives for businesses to encourage various hiring, training, and investing practices. But there are special compliance considerations that come with all of these programs. CW Editor Bill Coffin offers a closer look.

  • Blog

    Are you a Top Mind?

    2016-03-31T13:30:00Z

    Image: Compliance Week is profiling some of the brightest and most influential thought leaders in the world of governance, risk, and compliance as part of our inaugural Top Minds project—a series of in-depth profiles of corporate compliance officers, advisors, regulators, academics, and other experts to better understand how they view ...

  • Blog

    Living in glass houses can be a good thing

    2016-03-21T14:15:00Z

    A recent visit by CW Editor Bill Coffin to a building with no solid walls, and a chance encounter with one of the world’s wealthiest people offered a compelling case for the pursuit of transparency in both the literal and figurative sense.

  • Blog

    The cost of integrity

    2016-03-15T14:30:00Z

    Image: At the Global Ethics Summit, GE General Counsel and SVP Alex Dimitrief talked about what it means to promote a culture of integrity and the true costs of ethical lapses. When a business goes astray, it’s not a call for added workflows or approvals, he said. It’s a sign ...

  • Blog

    No matter who wins the Presidential race in November, compliance officers might lose

    2016-03-07T13:15:00Z

    After watching the most recent Democrat and Republican Presidential debates, one begins to wonder what the next President will seek to achieve on various regulatory fronts. Between candidates’ promises to regulate more strongly, or to deregulate entirely, it looks like no matter who wins in November, compliance officers are poised ...

  • Blog

    Glass walls and black curtains

    2016-02-29T14:15:00Z

    The death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia—and the scuttlebutt surrounding it—underscores the deep level of secrecy that surrounds the Supreme Court and how it operates. Meanwhile, compliance officers know only too well the price to pay for a lack of transparency. Maybe it’s time for the Supreme Court ...

  • Blog

    Blind moviegoers file suit for being left in the dark

    2016-02-22T15:15:00Z

    It’s the kind of legal case that causes groans across social media these days: a group of blind moviegoers sue AMC theatres for discrimination because it failed to accommodate the moviegoers’ special needs. On the surface, the lawsuit might seem ridiculous, but when you take a closer look, there is ...

  • Blog

    Apple, the FBI and a terrorist’s iPhone

    2016-02-19T10:45:00Z

    As the FBI continues its investigation into the deadly San Bernadino terror attack from last December, it has run into an unlikely adversary in Apple, which has refused the Bureau’s requests to defeat the security measures of one of the terrorists’ iPhones. While the legal struggle over this raises the ...

  • Blog

    Winter is coming

    2016-02-17T14:30:00Z

    It is easy to see data that is slightly off and to accept it, but what happens when you start accepting data that deviates from your deviation? It sounds crazy, but it happens all the time. Perhaps one of the best ways to combat this kind of creeping non-compliance is ...

  • Article

    Failure is not an option

    2016-02-17T11:15:00Z

    Image: As one of the world’s eight designated Systemically Important Financial Markets Utilities, the Options Clearing Corporation has what some might charitably describe as a heightened compliance profile. But thanks to the work of Chief Compliance Officer Richard Wallace and an enterprise-wide effort to build a world-league compliance program, the ...

  • Blog

    Ethics, Compliance, and GRC: A Foot on Both Banks

    2016-02-08T13:30:00Z

    Ethics & compliance is one thing, and governance, risk & compliance is another, and yet, both seem to overlap significantly. When considering how often compliance issues begin as ethics issues, Editor Bill Coffin wonders what can be done to ensure a more seamless integration of ethics into compliance, governance, and ...

  • Blog

    Pale, Male, and Stale

    2016-01-26T15:00:00Z

    The call for greater boardroom diversity is not merely a matter of political correctness; it’s a matter of modern business planning, and most of all, a matter of regulatory compliance. And yet, despite the strides being made here, there is still much more ground to cover, and progress seems to ...

  • Blog

    Chariots of Fire

    2016-01-21T14:15:00Z

    Hoverboards were this holiday season’s must-have present, but ongoing product safety concerns, patent infringement lawsuits, and even a regulator raid at a prominent electronics industry tradeshow all point to a product category that has been rushed to market in more ways than one, constituting a compliance failure that is as ...

  • Blog

    2015 Interactive Timeline: A Year of Transparency

    2016-01-20T14:45:00Z

    Whether it was the Swiss leaks scandal, the European Parliament’s formal adoption of the 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, or a movement to require multinational corporations to publicly report financial information on a country-by-country basis, 2015 was a year in which transparency became a watchword across Europe. Take a look at ...

  • Blog

    Remember When David Bowie Went Wall Street on Us?

    2016-01-13T15:15:00Z

    Image: In 1997, just before the music industry was about to be turned upside down by a Black Swan-level of remarkable circumstances, legendary rock artist David Bowie issued bonds on his future royalties, earning a handsome payday for himself, and managing to sidestep a financial cataclysm in the making. Was ...

  • Blog

    Game of War

    2016-01-11T14:45:00Z

    Image: When it comes to video games, there are violent games, games that are objectionably violent, and then there are games that actually manage to cross an ethical line in the sand. So when CW Editor Bill Coffin’s son asked for a game for Christmas that hit that third category, ...

  • Blog

    The Mast Brothers Meltdown

    2015-12-30T15:45:00Z

    For years, Mast Brothers, a brand of high-end, artisanal bean-to-bar chocolate, has proven to be an unlikely success story, making small batches of expensive chocolate bars from its humble operation in the heart of the hipster world—the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. But when Dallas-based food writer Scott Craig ...