All SEC articles – Page 85
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Blog
UBS Dark Pool Operation Leads to SEC Charges
The Securities and Exchange Commission this week charged a UBS subsidiary with disclosure failures and other securities law violations related to the operation and marketing of its dark pool. UBS Securities agreed to pay more than $14.4 million, including a $12 million penalty—the SEC’s largest against an alternative trading system. ...
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Blog
Houses Passes XBRL Exemption as Survey Reveals Costs
The House of Representatives passed legislation that includes an exemption for 60 percent of all public companies from the SEC requirement to submit interactive financial statement data using XBRL. Meanwhile, an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and XBRL U.S. study showed that nearly 75 percent of the smallest public ...
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SEC Adopts Swaps Rules; Piwowar Slams CCO Changes
The SEC has adopted new rules that will require security-based swap data repositories to register with the Commission and adhere to new recordkeeping and data transparency requirements. Commissioner Michael Piwowar was a dissenting vote over what he says were last-minute changes intended to crack down on individuals who lie to ...
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Blog
A Recap of FCPA Enforcement in 2014
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement actions brought by the Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission in 2014 held steady in comparison to the previous year's enforcement numbers, while the average price tag in penalty amounts continued to skyrocket. In 2014, the average total value of monetary resolutions in FCPA ...
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Blog
SEC Announces 2015 Examination Priorities
The SEC has released its examination priorities for 2015. The list includes cyber-security controls and assessing anti-money laundering efforts, with a focus on firms that have not filed suspicious activity reports or have incomplete or late filings. SEC staff will also examine proxy advisory service firms, assessing how they make ...
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Article
XBRL Filing Frustrations Tilting Toward Resolution
Image: Good news for companies weary of the unfulfilled promises around publishing financial data using XBRL: Events are looming that promise either to halt the march toward XBRL compliance or finally shove its usage forward. “XBRL is not working,” says Hudson Hollister of the Data Transparency Coalition. “Instead of getting ...
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Blog
XBRL Repeal for Small Companies Fails
This week the House of Representatives looked for a two-thirds majority vote to push through a proposal to exempt companies with revenues below $250 million from the XBRL filing requirement. The measure fell short, gaining just 276 votes out of the needed 281. More inside.
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Article
Preparing for Pay Rules, Privacy, and a New Congress
The SEC is likely to spend 2015 churning through as much rulemaking for the Dodd-Frank Act as it can, never mind being years behind schedule on that front. To complicate matters for the agency, Congress is also likely to try repealing some parts of the law even before the SEC ...
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Article
T&E Controls That Won’t Get You Busted
Image: Title: TillenThe SEC set the compliance community buzzing in December with two FCPA enforcement actions that hinge on improper travel and entertainment spending—an offense historically seldom seen in FCPA enforcement. Usually, “T&E abuses are add-on charges to an enforcement action involving a larger pool of improper activity,” says James ...
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SEC Staffers Try to Untangle Business Unit Accounting Issues
Image: Title: RogersAt a recent national accounting conference on regulatory issues, staff members at the Securities and Exchange Commission, including professional accounting fellow Chris Rogers (left), offered lots of advice on how companies can better explain to investors the intricacies of joint ventures, spinoffs, pushdown accounting, and segment reporting in ...
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Blog
SEC Relaxes View on Goodwill Impairment Test Date
Staff members at the SEC are easing up their expectation on preferability letters when companies decide to change the date of their annual goodwill impairment testing. Acknowledging the judgment that goes into making such a determination, staff members will no longer request a preferability letter to be obtained and filed, ...
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Blog
Debt Modification May Lead to Hedge Accounting Questions
Dec. 29—A friendly reminder from the SEC and auditing experts: If your company plans to issue or modify debt now, before the Fed raises interest rates sometime in 2015, check your debt agreements carefully to see whether you have any embedded derivatives language in there—since that could trigger new disclosures ...
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Blog
SEC's EDGAR Filings Go on Christmas Hiatus
The day after Christmas has been declared a non-working day for the federal government and the SEC’s electronic filing system, EDGAR, will not be operational on that day. The system resumes operations on Monday, Dec. 29 and filings due oth the 26th can be delayed until that time.
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Blog
Bruker to Pay $2.4 Million for FCPA Violations
Scientific instruments manufacturer Bruker will pay a $2.4 million penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by providing non-business related travel and improper payments to various Chinese government officials in an effort to win business. Details inside.
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Blog
PCAOB Disciplines Grant Thornton Auditor in Japan
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has disciplined a Grant Thornton auditor in Japan for failing to address numerous red flags that revenue could be overstated in the 2010 audit of Baldwin-Japan Ltd.
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Article
More Hints on Putting New COSO to Work
It’s official: The SEC will not roast companies over an open flame if they continue to use the old COSO framework for internal controls into 2015. That said, SEC staffers also warned at the annual AICPA conference last week that their largesse will not last long, and a bevy of ...
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Article
SEC Gives More Ideas on Less Disclosure
Image: A small army of SEC officials attended the annual AICPA conference last week, offering all manner of advice to financial reporting executives struggling to comply with external reporting rules. One subject: how to achieve better disclosure with fewer words. “We are aware there are some registrants that seem to ...
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Article
It May Be Voluntary, but NIST Framework Is a Crucial Cyber-Security Tool
Each day, it seems another big-name company falls victim to a cyber-attack. The new framework for assessing the security flaws, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, may be intended for critical-infrastructure companies, but other businesses may find that its guidance offers more help than the mélange of ...
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Blog
Analogic Nears End of FCPA Probe
Analogic, an airport security and medical-imaging technology provider, has disclosed that it’s likely to face sanctions by the Department of Justice and SEC for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The potential sanctions concern certain questionable transactions involving Analogic’s Danish subsidiary BK Medical and certain of its foreign distributors. ...
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Blog
Petrobras Creates Risk and Compliance Executive Director Role Amid Bribery Probe
Brazilian state-owned oil company Petrobras has created a new position of executive director of governance, risk, and compliance. The move comes as the company faces several investigations for its involvement in a widespread money-laundering scandal.