Compliance Week regularly tracks various personnel moves, board appointments, product releases, customer wins, and industry gossip in the corporate governance realm. Submit announcements to Compliance Week’s Jaclyn Jaeger.

From The Regulators

Spatt

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chief Economist and Director of the Office of Economic Analysis, Chester Spatt, will leave the agency to return to academia at the end of July. During his three years at the SEC, Spatt led the staff’s economic analysis of key issues including executive compensation, shareholder voting, and implementation of options expensing through models and markets. He will rejoin Carnegie Mellon University, where he serves as Mellon Bank professor of finance and director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Tepper School of Business.

CCOs, General Counsels, Corporate Secretaries

Dudley

Portland General Electric, a $1.5 billion NYSE-listed utility, has appointed Jay Dudley as vice president, general counsel, and compliance officer. Previously a lead regulatory attorney at the firm, Dudley will be responsible for PGE’s legal affairs and will coordinate the company’s internal audit, ethics, and compliance activities. He succeeds Doug Nichols, who will retire in August.

CNET Networks has named Andy Sherman senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary. He joins a company that has been implicated in a backdating scandal—the prior General Counsel Sharon Le Duy, as well as CEO Shelby Bonnie and other executives, resigned late last year amid stock option backdating revelations. Prior to joining CNET Networks, Sherman served as vice president of legal at Sybase.

Chatfield

Lake Forest, Ill.-based Brunswick Corporation has named Lloyd Chatfield II as vice president, general counsel and secretary. Chatfield joined the $5.7 billion boat maker in 2000, and has held a number of positions including deputy general counsel and managing director of mergers and acquisitions.

Chief Accounting Officers, Controllers

Beazer Homes USA has fired Chief Accounting Officer Michael Rand due to violations of the company’s ethics policy stemming from attempts to destroy documents. In a regulatory filing, the $5.4 billion home builder said the firm’s audit committee is conducting an internal investigation of the company’s mortgage origination business and related matters.

Swartz

Apollo Group, a for-profit education provider, has named Brian Swartz as senior vice president of finance and chief accounting officer. Swartz had been serving as SVP and chief accounting officer on a contract basis since February. The company also named Gregory Iverson, previously director of financial reporting at US Airways Group, as vice president and controller.

El Paso, Texas-based Western Refining has appointed William Jewell as chief accounting officer. Jewell joins the $4.2 billion El Paso, Texas-based firm with over 18 years of experience, most recently serving as assurance senior manager at KPMG.

The board of directors of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper Networks has designated Linda Neyer to serve as the company’s principal accounting officer. The company has certainly had accounting issues to contend with—last year, the $2.3 billion networking firm took a non-cash charge of about $900 million in the wake of an investigation related to stock option grants. Neyer has served as the company’s vice president of finance since November 2004.

The board of directors of Minneapolis-based General Mills has appointed Donal Mulligan as principal accounting officer. The $11.6 billion consumer goods firm made news earlier this decade when the SEC began probing a practice called “loading,” in which a company provides customers incentives to buy products that will help it meet sales targets. The SEC ended its investigation two years ago, and took no action. Mulligan joined General Mills in 1998, most recently serving as the company’s vice president and treasurer.

Board Of Directors

Haugarth

Minneapolis, Minn.-based Valspar has elected Janel Haugarth to the role of executive vice president, president, and chief operating officer and as a member of the board’s audit and governance committees. She is currently an EVP and divisional president at SuperValu. Valspar, a $3 billion paint company, also named Stephen Newlin as chairman, president, and chief executive officer and as a member of the board’s compensation and governance committees.

Wilsonville, Ore.-based InFocus Corp. announced the appointments of John Abouchar, Bruce Berkoff, Robert Ladd, and Bernard Marren to its board of directors. Each will be appointed to the audit committee, the compensation committee, and the nominating and corporate governance committee. In addition, Abouchar was appointed as chair of the audit committee, and Berkoff was appointed as chairman of the nominating and corporate governance committee.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has elected David Cote to its board of directors. Cote is currently the chairman and CEO of Honeywell International, and was previously the CEO of TRW and the CEO of GE Appliances. He will also serve on the risk and public responsibility board committees at JPM.

Elk Grove Village, IL-based Material Sciences Corporation has elected Dominick Schiano to its board of directors and to serve on the board’s audit committee. Schiano, is the vice chairman at Global Industrial Partners of Credit Suisse DLJ Merchant Banking, a position he has held since March 2007. His election expands the size of its board from seven to eight directors.

From The Vendors

Moreno

Litigation consulting firm Hill Schwartz Spilker Keller, based in Dallas, announced that it is expanding its computer forensics and electronic discovery practice at its headquarters. Gilbert Moreno, a former Department of Defense computer forensics section chief, is joining as a senior consultant. In addition, HSSK is growing its Houston computer forensics practice by adding e-discovery professional Brian Larsen as a senior consultant. Moreno most recently worked for the U.S. Air Force in the Department of Defense computer forensics laboratory in Baltimore. Larsen most recently worked for Guidance Software, as a senior consultant.

In honor of his “outstanding contributions” to the internal audit profession, James Kaplan was awarded the Bradford Cadmus Memorial Award by The Institute of Internal Auditors. Initiated in 1965, the award is named after The IIA’s first managing director and recognizes internal audit practitioners for research, academic involvement, article and book publication, and other thought-leading pursuits. Kaplan has been an internal auditor for more than 26 years and is the founder of AuditNet.org, a Web site that fosters the development of modern internal auditing. He is the author of The Auditor’s Guide to Internet Resources and has written extensively on internal audit matters.