All Compliance Week articles in Web Issue – Page 593
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Blog
2016 SEC trial scorecard update: agency undefeated after three trials
On Monday, February 29, 2016, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York returned a verdict in favor of the SEC in the agency's third federal court trial of FY 2016. The agency remains undefeated in FY 2016having been successful in SEC v. Payton ...
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BlogSEC advises caution on revenue recognition policies
While international regulators have finished up with revenue recognition, the SEC continues to advise companies to scrutinize U.S. regulators’ impending work on the standard. FASB has scheduled three meetings for the Transition Resource Group, which will be airing and discussing any implementation questions it has received. According to Deputy Chief ...
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Blog
SEC’s Piwowar on regulatory challenges to ABS marketplace
Image: Speaking at the ABS Vegas 2016 conference this week, billed as the “largest capital markets conference in the world,” SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar agreed with that characterization, but quipped that banking regulators—unfortunately, in his view—might be inclined to call it the “largest shadow banking conference in the world.” Piwowar ...
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Blog
Cyber-security storms internal audit plans, poll finds
A new survey from Protiviti of 1,300 internal audit professionals shows that companies have made big progress in the past year integrating cyber-security risk into internal audit plans. Nearly three out of every four organizations include cyber-security risk in their internal audit plans, according to the poll, up from only ...
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Blog
Throwback Thursday: The three-digit insider trading case
At least one commentator declared this week's SEC insider trading case alleging illegal profits of just $1,083 to be the smallest insider trading case ever. Nope!
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Blog
EU rule on derivative contracts aims for financial stability
Image: The European Commission has adopted a new set of rules that requires certain over-the-counter credit derivative contracts to be cleared through central counterparties. The rules implement a clearing obligation under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation for credit default swaps. “[The] decision marks another step towards making good on our ...
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Article
Gender pay gap reporting in the United Kingdom
The draft regulations on reporting statistics outlining the potential gender pay gap at U.K. companies were published in early February this year, and reactions to the regulations have on the whole been positive, says Jillian Naylor, employment partner at U.K. law firm Linklaters. Inside, CW’s Paul Hodgson provides an in-depth ...
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Blog
Another bank under FCPA scrutiny for its hiring practices
Financial services providers face unique corruption risks when seeking to win business in international markets. This includes a traditional form of back-scratching: the hiring of children or other close family members of prominent foreign officials. Only now the SEC has made it clear that such practices can and will invite ...
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ArticleIs blockchain technology FinTech’s magic bullet?
Image: Bitcoin is dead; long live blockchain. To be fair, bitcoin, the much-hyped virtual currency, is hardly ready to fade into oblivion. The technology underlying those online exchanges, however, is poised to become the hottest technology to hit the financial world in years, albeit not without significant business and regulatory ...
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Article
Climate change continues to be a disclosure concern
While pundits and true believers on both sides of the environmental fence bicker over climate change, public companies may want to focus their attention on specific developments that could influence their disclosure regime and what they quantify as material information for investors. Questions they should be asking: whether state officials ...
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Article
Compliance lessons from VimpelCom
Image: Ethics, compliance, and audit executives have yet another real-life bribery case to add to their growing library of epic anti-corruption compliance failures—this one resulting in the sixth largest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement action of all time. “This case demonstrates a failure of internal controls at every turn,” says ...
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Blog
Olympus to pay $623.2 million for kickback scheme
Olympus Corporation of the Americas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan-based Olympus, will pay $623.2 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims relating to a scheme to pay kickbacks to doctors and hospitals—the largest total amount paid in U.S. history for violations involving the Anti-Kickback Statute by a medical device ...
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Article
Healthcare, ransomware, and effective cyber-security hygiene
Imagine this: You’re a large healthcare provider whose staff is having trouble accessing vital records in your hospital’s computer network. Your IT department begins an immediate investigation and determines the cause to be a malware attack. Worse yet, the attackers are demanding ransom to obtain the decryption key. How do ...
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Article
Evolving your identity management program: Six cautionary considerations
For compliance professionals in regulated industries, there’s perhaps no greater challenge than identity management. Call it a program, a best practice or simply a daily struggle to account for all users and all the systems to which they have access—identity management is a beast that is tough to tame.
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Blog
SEC seeks comment on rule requiring naming engagement partners
The SEC is gathering comment on recent PCAOB rules that require audit firms to complete a new filing providing the name of engagement partners on public company audit engagements. PCAOB rules are subject to SEC approval before they can become final, which is why the Commission wants to hear remarks ...
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Article
Q&A: Coping with the speed of change within internal audit
Image: As the world of internal audit is swiftly changing, Doug Anderson, former corporate auditor for Dow Chemical and new managing director for CAE solutions for the Institute of Internal Auditors, speaks to the challenges of helping to drive internal audit to be more forward-looking, how to properly harness the ...
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Blog
The state of “Emperor’s New Clothes” corporate disclosure
Capital markets move on information. And business in general improves in a competitive world when oversight is grounded in meaningful data. That’s why transparency in disclosure is such a good thing. But what we have now is bland compliance, not insightful communication, and it’s pretending that something exists when it’s ...
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Blog
FINRA: establishing and implementing cultural values
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued new guidance on what firms will be expected to discuss regarding their firm’s cultural values. FINRA plans to meet with business, compliance, legal, and risk executives to discuss how to communicate and reinforce values. “We are particularly interested in how your firm measures compliance ...
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Article
How internal audit can help drive corporate culture
Traditional notions of audit are focused on verifying quantified data, but can audit provide that same benefit in the ether space of business, verifying the presence or absence of intangible characteristics? The internal audit profession is starting to believe it is possible, and its leaders are calling on audit executives ...