All Compliance Week articles in Web Issue – Page 675
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Blog
Canadian Court Shifts Corporate Liability to Managers
A recent decision by the Quebec Superior Court found that Canadian companies can be held criminally liable for the wrongful actions of their middle managers, even when the head office has no knowledge of the misconduct. The decision “mark[s] a fundamental change, if not a revolution, in the law of ...
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Blog
SEC Chief Accountant Retreats From IFRS Filing Idea
Image: SEC chief accountant James Schnurr is distancing himself from an idea he floated last year that the Commission might allow U.S. companies an option to report under International Financial Reporting Standards. Schnurr says staff outreach revealed “little support” for that idea, essentially leaving convergence to standard setters. Details inside.
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Blog
JPMorgan’s Laundry List of Government Probes
JPMorgan disclosed last week in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is under several investigations concerning a wide variety of claims, including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, foreign exchange sales, LIBOR, and much more. “Investigations involve both formal and informal proceedings by both ...
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Blog
FinCEN Fines First Virtual Currency Exchanger
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network fined Ripple Labs and its subsidiary, XRP II, $700,000 for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act while engaging in the exchange of virtual currency and for failing to establish and maintain an appropriate anti-money laundering program—the first civil enforcement action against a virtual currency exchanger. ...
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Blog
PCAOB Gives Audit Committees Oversight Cheat Sheet
As inspectors begin looking at 2014 public company audit files, they will be tuning in to emerging market risks around mergers and acquisitions, falling oil prices, undistributed foreign earnings, and the quality of audit work as firms grow other business lines. The PCAOB published a new paper reaching out to ...
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Blog
TrialCard Names Chief Compliance Officer
TrialCard, a company that provides product access, medication adherence, and patient support services on behalf of pharmaceutical manufacturers, has hired Michele Atchison to its corporate legal team in the role of chief compliance officer. One of Atchison’s primary areas of focus in her new role will be overseeing TrialCard’s government ...
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Resource
e-Book: The Nuts and Bolts of T&E Policies
The risks lurking within the travel and entertainment account—bribery, accounting fraud, excessive spending, and much more—make proper oversight of T&E an urgent job for compliance and audit executives. Worse, even when you have a strong T&E policy, the ingenuity of employees trying to evade it knows few boundaries. And problems ...
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Blog
Point72 Adds Former DOJ/SEC Prosecutor Kevin O’Connor as GC
Steve Cohen's Point72 announced that this week that it has hired former DOJ prosecutor and SEC enforcement attorney Kevin O’Connor as its new general counsel.
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Blog
FinCEN Targets Money Laundering in Real Estate Deals
Image: Expect a greater focus on the use of real estate holdings as a vehicle for money laundering, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of FinCEN, said recently. The goal: “Make it more difficult for criminals to hide their purchases of luxury real estate through the use of shell companies.” Moreover, she ...
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Resource
Vendor Risk Management: Conducting Pre-Contract Due Diligence
Today’s global, digital economy opens up a world of opportunities—and a whole new world of risk exposure. When important parts of your business can be fulfilled anywhere, risks may be everywhere.If one of your vendors takes a hit, you could take the fall. Which begs the question: Do you have ...
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Blog
European Watchdogs Calls for Banks to Revisit Business Models
European regulators are urging banks to revamp their business models to reduce risk and enhance a culture of compliance. A joint report issued by the European Union’s banking, insurance, and market regulators says, “Despite numerous actions already taken by regulators and supervisors, both from prudential and consumer protection perspectives, recent ...
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Blog
EU’s Apple, Amazon, Fiat and Starbucks Tax Inquiry Postponed
Image: The European Commission has placed Amazon, Starbucks, Fiat Finance and Trade, and Apple’s tax probe on hold amid concerns about obtaining information relating to these cases, said European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a testimony before the European Parliament. While Vestager did not give a new deadline for the ...
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Blog
FASB Issues New Rules, Proposals on Narrow Areas of GAAP
The Financial Accounting Standards Board has been busy the past few weeks pushing out some narrowly focused changes to accounting standards that address earnings per share, fair value measurement, intangible assets, and compensation, not to mention additional proposals involving liabilities associated with gift cards, hedging for energy concerns, and benefit ...
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Article
Throwing Books & Records at ’Em
Image: Compliance officers responsible for accurate books and records and effective internal control over financial reporting may be entering a brave new world of regulatory enforcement. The SEC is stepping up its use of administrative proceedings to impose strict liability on even relatively minor infractions of securities law. “The SEC ...
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Article
Far East: The Epicenter of FCPA Enforcement?
Image: Everyone says bribery risk is highest along the Pacific Rim, but how acute is the problem really? Pretty bad, according to a Compliance Week review of recent FCPA enforcement actions—and the risks will only increase as more U.S. companies enter Asia and more Asian companies tap U.S. capital markets. ...
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Article
Q&A: How E*Trade Recovered From the Financial Crisis
Image: As part of our occasional series of conversations with compliance and risk executives, we caught up with Michael Pizzi, chief risk officer at E*Trade Financial. Prior to the financial crisis, E*Trade had made sizable investments in mortgage-related assets—toxic assets whose value ultimately plummeted, resulting in substantial writedowns for the ...
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Article
Latest Pay Disclosure: Bring on the Metrics, Break Out the Peers
Image: Compensation committees and external reporting executives should brace for impact from the SEC’s newest addition to executive compensation disclosure: pay-for-performance rules. The detailed new disclosures (tagged in XBRL, no less) will be extensive, the consequences for executive pay unknown. “How useful is this information really going to be? To ...
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Article
Parsing the Data on Financial Restatements
Image: The data behind financial restatements tell a fairly positive tale for 2014, with improvements in financial reporting across many variables (unless you’re an accelerated filer, where restatements edged up from the prior year). Inside we have a close look at which companies restated for what reasons, and whether improvement ...
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Blog
Despite LIBOR Manipulation, SEC Grants Deutsche Bank Waiver
Image: The SEC has decided not to let an admission of LIBOR manipulation result in the loss of Deutsche Bank’s well-known seasoned issuer status. “It is safe to assume that these waiver requests will continue to roll in, as issuers are now emboldened by an unofficial Commission policy to overlook ...
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Article
EU Companies Face CSR Reporting Mandate in 2016
Image: This week Compliance Week starts a series on corporate sustainability, asking the most basic question of all: Will sustainability reporting ever be required? Yes, at least in the European Union. Inside we look at the state of CSR in Europe, and what role compliance officers are likely to play. ...