After pushing through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Barney Frank now needs to run for re-election. He is not running unopposed in the Democrat primary, but the opposition is … “interesting.” Barney is the congressman for my district, so I have voted for him in the past and plan to vote [...]
Archive | September, 2010
Ethics Upgrade at Oracle?
I’m not sure what to make of Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard, Larry Ellison, and Oracle. HP threw Hurd out on the street for some stupid behavior. By throwing out on the street, I mean let him keep most of his compensation package. Larry Ellison immediately came to his defense. He even went a step further and [...]
Credit Rating Agency Investigated for Fraud
The SEC brought an action against LACE Financial for issues with its independence. We also learned that the SEC had investigated whether rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. violated the registration provisions or the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. Moody’s was working on a rating for some new European securities. They ended up [...]
Credit Rating Agencies and Conflicts of Interest
Personally, I place a big chunk of blame on the Credit Rating Agencies for the Great Panic of 2008. They were throwing AAA ratings at piles of garbage. There is an inherent conflict in the rater being paid by the security issuer instead of the security purchaser. They are beholden to the customer and the [...]
Compliance Bits and Pieces for September 3
You are either getting your kids back to school, enjoying a vacation, or enjoying everyone else being out of the office on vacation. Me? I’m out of the office. There was still some interesting compliance news this past week: SEC employees win battle to dress casual By Zachary Goldfarb for Market Cop Some of the [...]
The Trouble with Anonymous Surveys
So how are your surveys working? Do you get meaningful results? Are the results skewed by those who responded (versus those who didn’t)?
FCPA Release 10-03: Foreign Agents as Foreign Officials
The Department of Justice released its latest FCPA Opinion Release. The requesting company for this opinion release is stepping into a situation full of FCPA red flags. In the end, the DOJ opined that it would not bring an enforcement action based on the safeguards put in place by the company. The company is involved [...]
Blatant Self-Promotion
Each year, LexisNexis “honors a select group of blogs that set the online standard for a given industry.” This year, they expanded Top Blogs to include their Business Law Communities. Compliance Building is one of the nominated candidates for the LexisNexis Top 25 Business Law Blogs of 2010, featured on the LexisNexis Corporate & Securities [...]
Telling the Truth During Earnings Calls
Is the CEO or CFO lying during the quarterly earnings call? How can you tell? David F. Larcker and Anastasia A. Zakolyukina of the Stanford Graduate School of Business turned to the rich data set of quarterly calls and subsequent financial restatements. After studying Q&A sections of transcripts of hundreds of calls with CEOs and [...]
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