With the winter Olympics going full swing in Canada, I thought I would look to how that country is dealing with securities class actions. NERA Economic Consulting just released their 2009 Update on Trends in Canadian Securities Class Actions. Some tidbits: Eight securities class actions were filed in 2009, compared with the 10 filings in [...]
Archive | February, 2010
Media Leak is not Protected as a SOX Whistleblower
Leaking information to the media about bad financial controls is not protected by SOX whistleblower retaliation clause. Nicholas P. Tides and Matthew C. Neumann were working as “Audit IT SOX auditors” at The Boeing Company. They made several complaints about auditing deficiencies to their supervisors. They claimed “that Boeing’s auditing culture was unethical and that [...]
The Economist: Special Report on Financial Risk
This week’s The Economist has an excellent special report: The Gods Strike Back. The title comes from Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods: “The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that [...]
President’s Day
Washington’s Birthday, the federal holiday was originally implemented by the United States Congress in 1880 for government offices in the District of Columbia (20 Stat. 277) and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices (23 Stat. 516). As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s actual [...]
Weekend Book Review: In Fed We Trust
It is only fitting that I am writing this book review on a Sunday. In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic starts off by telling about the importance of a few Sundays in 2008. In March, there was the Sunday when the Federal Reserve announced an unprecedented action to lend $30 [...]
Blogoversary!
Instead of substantive information, today’s post focuses on me and this website. Compliance Building went public on February 12, 2009. Since then, it looks like I have managed to get out a blog post every business day. Sometimes, more than one. Thanks for reading. If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe and have [...]
California Proposes Having Placement Agents Register
Placement agents would have to register as lobbyists under legislation proposed by Assemblyman Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina). The legislation would define placement agents as lobbyists in accordance with the state’s Political Reform Act. Placement agents would have to register as lobbyists before pitching investment ideas to public pension plans in California. It seems like the [...]
Another Reason to Secure Your Wireless Network
If you care about network security, you are probably well aware of the Massachusetts Data Privacy Law and its requirement to secure wireless networks. But password-protecting a wireless router also has constitutional significance. A child pornography suspect had no constitutionally protected privacy right in the files found on his personal computer, accessible by a neighbor [...]
Proposed Amendments to Sentencing Guidelines
The United States Sentencing Commission has proposed some changes to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Of the eight changes, one should catch the eye of compliance professionals. There is a proposed amendment to Chapter Eight of the Guidelines Manual regarding the sentencing of organizations, including proposed changes to §8B2.1 (Effective Compliance and Ethics Program) and §8D1.4 [...]
Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation
Dan Pink, at TED Global in July 2009, broke tasks, performance and rewards for performance into two groups. With complex problems, financial rewards do not impact performance and seem to dull creativity. Actually, they seem to deter performance. With a simple problem and a simple set of rules, then contingent motivations for performance (like financial [...]
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