All Compliance Week articles in Web Issue – Page 670
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Blog
Regulator Calls on ECB to Tighten Its Rules of Engagement
Image: The European Central Bank’s transparency woes continue as Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly is urging the central bank to build a robust rules of engagement practice by putting a stop to banker meetings ahead of setting policy. O’Reilly said ECB officials should not give investors any advantage over rivals prior to ...
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Blog
NY’s New AML Rules Seek Enhanced Monitoring, Attestations
Image: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed a slate of new anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism regulations for financial institutions that fall under that state’s supervision. They include a requirement that senior financial executives certify their institutions have sufficient systems in place to detect, weed out, and prevent illicit transactions, ...
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Blog
Aguilar Explains It All: Advice for Future SEC Commissioners
Image: As he moves on from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Luis Aguilar has a parting gift for future commissioners who will follow in his footsteps. He has issued a public statement, likely his last as a commissioner, to share what he has learned about navigating the unique challenges that ...
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Blog
Law Firm Slater & Gordon Now Taking Its Lumps as Public Company
Slater & Gordon, a publicly-traded Australian law firm that is a major player in the plaintiffs’ securities class action area, must now contend with the consequences of its own stock price plummeting.
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Prepping the Audit Committee for 2016 Proxy Season
The 2016 proxy season will bring much scrutiny as usual, but two developments in corporate governance—the new COSO framework, and the Audit Quality Indicator project—might help committees manage the workload better. Inside, columnists Stephen Davis and Jon Lukomnik review how compliance officers can use those tools to help audit committees ...
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Blog
Checking Up on GSK in China
When thinking through an FCPA risk assessment, one thing usually not considered adequately is a company’s sales culture. To see the consequences of that, one need look no further than GSK’s corruption troubles in China—but, CW blogger Tom Fox writes, the reforms GSK has implemented with its sales force are ...
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Article
Amid Financial Reporting Changes, SEC Offers Cautions
With changes looming on accounting standards for revenue recognition, leases, financial instruments, and more, skittish corporate accountants often turn to the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance and staff accountants, relying on phone briefings and pre-clearing consultations to get ahead of financial reporting issues before they result in an SEC comment ...
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Blog
First DPA Under U.K. Bribery Act
Image: On Monday the U.K. Serious Fraud Office announced its first deferred-prosecution agreement under the Bribery Act for bribes ICBC Standard Bank Plc paid to government officials in Tanzania intended to sway their favor toward a proposed $600 million private placement. Inside, our anti-corruption blogger Tom Fox explores what lessons ...
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Article
Little to Fear in New World of Lease Accounting
Accounting for leases is about to undergo a profound change, thanks to a new standard adopted by accounting rulemakers in the United States and overseas. The new standard has its critics; in a special guest column this week, Gary Kabureck—former chief accounting officer of Xerox, now a member of the ...
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Article
The Technology Transforming Your Annual Audit
Image: The audit profession is slowly retooling itself for the modern IT age, after decades of reliance on random sampling and manual methods that now fail to meet today’s expectations for precision. “Ultimately, this is how the industry will finally achieve its long-term goal of continuous auditing,” says Joanna Schultz ...
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Article
Working With External Compliance Monitors
Image: So your company has just entered into a settlement with a U.S. government agency and must now install a compliance monitor. How do you respond? For many companies, working with an external compliance monitor is still an intimidating process tainted by misconceptions. “A monitorship was never designed to ...
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Article
SEC Girds for Next Wave of Political Battles
On paper, the next several months mark the final stretch for the SEC’s implementation of Dodd-Frank Act rulemaking. In reality expect continued battles over the law, waged by both Republicans and Democrats. Recent congressional hearings gave a sense of what’s to come: stress tests for asset management funds, fights over ...
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Article
Employee Investigations Post-Yates Memo
Image: Any company that has faced allegations of corporate misconduct knows how quickly the scope and cost of an internal investigation can grow—a concern that has only amplified following the Justice Department’s Yates Memo. “Corporate compliance professionals have expressed concern that this policy will result in companies undertaking unnecessarily broad, ...
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Blog
PCAOB Nears New Rule on Naming Engagement Partners
Image: PCAOB Chairman James Doty believes the board will be in a position “very soon” to finalize a rule requiring audit firms to submit a new form, Form AP, to the PCAOB naming engagement partners and other accounting firms that contribute to the final audit opinion for public companies. Doty ...
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Blog
ICBC Standard Bank Gets First U.K. Deferred Prosecution Agreement
ICBC Standard Bank has become the recipient of Britain's first deferred prosecution agreement, the U.K. Serious Fraud Office announced today. The bank will pay a total of $32.6 million in fines and repayments of bribery payments resulting from allegations of bribery in Tanzania. “This landmark DPA will serve as a ...
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Blog
Barclays: A Modern Enforcement Action for Modern Misconduct
Image: Last week the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority whacked Barclays with a fine of £72 million ($109 million) for sloppy oversight of a huge private-client deal brimming with financial crime risk. The more you read the details of the transaction and how poorly bank executives managed it, the more you ...
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Blog
Fed Puts New Limitations on Bank Bailouts
The Federal Reserve Board has clarified its procedures for emergency lending to banking institutions and placed new restrictions on future bailouts. A final rule, approved Monday and effective on Jan. 1, broadens the existing definition of insolvency and requires that emergency lending be approved by the Treasury Department. These and ...