All Compliance Week articles in Web Issue – Page 591
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Blog
Survey finds mid-sized businesses still challenged by ACA
The recently released ADP Midsized Business Owners Study for 2015 looks at how that market segment is responding to regulatory and compliance challenges, notably obligations under the Affordable Care Act. Regulatory concerns appear to be increasing. In 2014, only 30 percent ranked managing the layers of government regulations as the ...
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Blog
Internal audit intelligence calls for elevated service levels
Image: At a recent Institute of Internal Auditors conference, audit executives heard the early returns from the annual IIA Common Body of Knowledge study that suggest North American audit stakeholders would welcome more help in identifying strategic risks. Brian Christensen, executive vice president at consulting firm Protiviti, which assisted with ...
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Blog
SEC awards nearly $2 million in latest blockbuster whistleblower payout
The SEC announced another blockbuster whistleblower award yesterday. The agency stated that it will pay nearly $2 million to three whistleblowers in a case -- including a payment of approximately $1.8 million to one of the three whistleblowers.
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Blog
EU non-financial reporting: directives and consultations
The Non-Financial Reporting Directive requiring all member states to adopt legislation for public company non-financial reporting comes into force on 6 December 2014, giving EU member states two years to transpose it into national law. According to a European Commission impact assessment, those companies have a lot of work to ...
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BlogHow Qualcomm’s FCPA blunder involved rank incompetency
Hiring the son or daughter of a government official to secure a lucrative business contract is clearly out of bounds. But hiring somebody who was specifically rejected from an interview process as being unfit for the job in question, a scenario recently played out at Qualcomm and its China-based operations ...
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Blog
Report: Europe makes up majority of U.S. bribery investigations
The majority of U.S. investigations and enforcement actions concerning alleged bribery of foreign officials conducted against non-U.S. companies and individuals involved companies or individuals from Europe, according to a new report issued by anti-bribery group TRACE International. Companies or individuals from Europe made up approximately 71 percent of U.S. bribery ...
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Blog
Run, don't walk, from CEO conflicts of interest
On March 2, Aubrey McClendon—founder and CEO of American Energy Partners, and co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Chesapeake Energy—died in a fiery one-person car crash, where it appears he deliberately drove his vehicle into a concrete barrier around a highway overpass. This car accident occurred the day after he was ...
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Article
Q&A with Randy Stephens of NAVEX Global: Why third-party due diligence still flummoxes so many companies
Image: Third-party risk continues to be a major concern for executives, and there is no shortage of high-profile compliance failures in recent years. And yet, a recent survey by NAVEX Global of more than 300 ethics and compliance professionals found that 32 percent of their companies don’t evaluate third parties ...
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Article
Proxy season debates may include board scrutiny and short-termism
With proxy season just around the corner, the annual tradition of assessing the mood of investors has begun. On tap, experts say, are demands for improved transparency and communication, better disclosures, and a continuing scrutiny of directors, including how (and how much) they and their C-suite cohorts are compensated. “We ...
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Blog
Audit regulators globally call on big firms for faster improvement
Audit regulators globally say they aren’t satisfied with inspection results the past few years and are working with the six largest global audit networks—Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC, BDO, and Grant Thornton—to step up the pace of improvement. The International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators, a global association of audit regulators ...
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Article
Footnotes of the future: reflections from the Disclosure Initiative
The IASB hears from investors all the time: Financial statement disclosures are too complicated, with too much insignificant detail; unorganized footnotes; and language that reads like a checklist. Seems the board has been listening. Inside, IASB member Gary Kabureck discusses some of the actions the board is taking to improve ...
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Blog
DOJ's Patrick Stokes promoted, Daniel Kahn named acting head of FCPA unit
The current head of the DOJ's FCPA unit, Patrick Stokes, has been named Senior Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section. Daniel S. Kahn, Assistant Chief of the FCPA unit since 2013, will now serve as Acting Head of the FCPA unit.
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Blog
SEC creates Office of Risk and Strategy
The SEC is creating an Office of Risk and Strategy within its Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, which will consolidate and streamline risk assessment, market surveillance, and quantitative analysis teams and provide operational risk management and organizational strategy for OCIE. Peter Driscoll will lead the office and has been ...
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Blog
Former FTC general counsel joins Sidley
Jonathan Nuechterlein, former general counsel for the Federal Trade Commission, has joined law firm Sidley Austin as partner and co-leader of the firm's communications regulatory practice. He also joins the antitrust/competition practice.
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Article
Women on U.K. boards: A (partial) success story
Corporate boards across the United Kingdom continue to have low numbers of women on them, suggesting that the struggle to increase board diversity is going slower than planned. But progress is indeed being made, all while raising the difficult questions as to why it is not so easy to build ...
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Blog
21st Century Oncology to pay $34.7 million for False Claims Act violations
21st Century Oncology, a physician-led integrated cancer care provider, and its wholly owned subsidiary South Florida Radiation Oncology, will pay $34.7 million to settle allegations that they performed and billed for procedures that were not medically necessary. Since January 2009, the Justice Department has recovered a total of more than ...
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Article
Putting FINRA’s priorities into practice
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s full court press on addressing emerging and existing risks in the securities industry will continue to intensify in 2016, reinforced by a steady surge in restitution, disciplinary actions, and bars and suspensions over the last five years. What are FINRA’s top regulatory and examination priorities, ...
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Blog
The pros and cons of quarterly reporting
Image: A common criticism of the requirement for U.S. public companies to report quarterly is that it engenders too much short termism. The debate over the pros and cons of quarterly reporting has raged for decades, with no end in sight. But what if there was a way to retain ...
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ArticleSpain bolsters anti-competition enforcement
Spanish regulators are paying closer attention to anti-competitive behavior across several industries, demonstrated by record fines and enforcement actions reached in 2015. Multinationals with operations in Spain should heed the warning. “We are now seeing that the amount of total fines [is] getting higher and higher,” says Crisanto Perez-Abad of ...
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Article
Accounting standards update brings lease contracts under the spotlight
Image: After years of reports that entities would one day be required to reflect all of their lease obligations on the balance sheet, companies finally have a major new accounting standard to adopt that will bring all but the tiniest assets and liabilities arising from lease contracts onto corporate balance ...