California Sues Sempra Energy

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed a lawsuit against Sempra Energy Trading, alleging that the company committed a large-scale fraud during the so-called energy crisis of 2000 and 2001 by manipulating wholesale electricity prices “through widespread playing of Enron games.”“Sempra ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 18, 2005

Former Hollinger CFO Indicted with Black

Former Hollinger International chief financial officer John Boultbee, former chairman and chief executive officer Conrad Black, and two other executives have been indicted for stealing $51.8 million from the company. They were accused of wire fraud and mail fraud in an 11-count expanded indictmen...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 18, 2005

Monrad Officially Leaves TIAA-CREF

Elizabeth Monrad has resigned as executive vice president and chief financial officer of TIAA-CREF, the New York City–based retirement fund and financial services organization.She had not been performing her day-to-day duties since May 10, when she took a leave of absence after receiving a Wells ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 17, 2005

Judge Freezes Assets of Former CFO

A federal judge froze the assets of the former chief financial officer of Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. after the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of embezzling more than $69 million from the company over a five-year period, according to the regulator.The SEC said the former CFO, Jonath...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 17, 2005

Hedge Fund Pressures McDonald’s

McDonald’s is the most recent target of outside investor attempts to shake up management.William Ackman, managing partner at Pershing Square Capital Management, has called for the fast-food giant to spin off 65 percent of its 8,000 company-owned restaurants and borrow $14.7 billion against its re...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 15, 2005

Sovereign Bancorp Fires Back at Investor

Sovereign Bancorp is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore.Officials at the Philadelphia-based financial institution are pushing back at an institutional investor, saying the bank has rejected the demand by activist hedge fund Relational Investors LLC to inspect certain records of the c...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 11, 2005

Rethinking the Worst Case

To understand how Hurricane Katrina is changing the way Corporate America thinks about disaster recovery, look no further than the computer-services company in New Orleans that located its data center to the third floor of its building to preclude any possible risk of flood damage. “I salute them...

By Randy Myers • Nov. 10, 2005

An Ounce of Retention

Two years ago, Gary Loveridge had a sudden realization — the bad kind. As general counsel for Sutter Health, a nonprofit health-care network, he realized that the way his organization handled growing volumes of E-mail posed a risk. Sutter Health is a highly decentralized group with 40,000 employe...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Nov. 9, 2005

MBIA Restates, Sets Reserve

MBIA Inc. announced that it has set aside $75 million to settle several regulatory probes and will restate its financial results going back to 1998.The holding company for MBIA Insurance Corp., which provides financial guarantee insurance, added that it would file its delayed third-quarter result...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 8, 2005

CEO Resigns, CFO to Leave RenaissanceRe

RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. announced that chairman and chief executive officer James Stanard has resigned. Neill A. Currie was named CEO and W. James MacGinnitie, non-executive chairman.The insurance company added that chief operating officer and chief financial officer John M. Lummis plans to r...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 2, 2005

A Trade Secret Comes to Light, Again

Three years ago, Skyworks Solutions Inc. was in a quandary. Sales of its semiconductors were soaring and the company was eager to increase capacity and boost research and development. To finance the expansion, Skyworks wanted to tap a key asset — $60 million in receivables — to use as collateral ...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 1, 2005

When Lightning Strikes

Companies’ contingency planning used to consist of little more than duplicating IT facilities in case their systems went down or the hardware in their basement was flooded. Today, however, firms are aware that they need to think about many more potential disruptions. Hardly a week goes by without...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 28, 2005

Who’s Holding the Bag?

Seven years ago this month, bankers across Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief. Two rate cuts in two weeks by the Federal Reserve had finally stanched the bleeding at Long-Term Capital Management — but not before the Fed cajoled some 14 banks into buying pieces of the collapsing hedge fund to s...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 27, 2005

Study Hits InstitutionaI Investor Suits

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study asserts that the outcomes of class-action lawsuits are stacked in favor of large institutions.“The average American investor gets the short end of the stick in the securities class-action system as compared to large institutional investors,” says Lisa Rickard, pre...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 27, 2005

WorldCom Investors Get $651 Million

A total of 67 institutional investors recovered more than $651 million from a group of banks and other defendants to compensate the investors for losses on purchases of WorldCom bonds and stock from 1998 through 2001, according to Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, the law fir...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 27, 2005

New Guidance on Small-business Controls

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) has released for public comment the exposure draft of its much-anticipated Guidance for Smaller Public Companies Reporting on Internal Control over Financial Reporting.The 189-page draft outlines 26 fundamental principles...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 26, 2005

Southwest Hedging Fuels Q3 Results

Who said surging fuel prices destroy profits? Certainly not the folks at Southwest Airlines Co.Southwest announced that third-quarter net income jumped about 91 percent, to $227 million. This is a far cry from the story at most other airlines, which are either in bankruptcy or trying to avoid it....

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

‘What’s a Sarbox? Say Many Shareholders

More than three years after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, investors are apparently not too confident that the new governance rules are reining in inappropriate behavior by corporate executives.According to a new poll conducted by The Wall Street Journaland Harris Interactive, 55 percent ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

GAO Eyes Settlement Write-offs

The Internal Revenue Service and agencies that reach civil settlements with businesses should work more closely to ensure that companies give the proper tax treatment to their payouts, maintains a report from the Government Accountability Office.Earlier this year, for example, Marsh & McLenna...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

Automation and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

Most companies are anxious for business unit managers to assume accountability for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Yet, they also realize that the biggest pain points in the compliance process — and the biggest opportunities for achieving savings and greater efficiency — lie not in the scramble for be...

By Eric Laursen • Oct. 18, 2005

When Risk Meets Reality

At its simplest, banking comes down to this: borrow short, lend long, and pocket the spread. But ever since the banking crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, bankers have sought more sophisticated ways of making money. As some learned to their sorrow, being so tightly linked to interest rates...

By Ronald Fink • Oct. 18, 2005

Samsung Fined $300 Million for Price Fix

Samsung Electronics Co., the big Korean maker of computer memory chips, and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., have agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $300 million fine — the second biggest in a criminal antitrust case in U.S. history — for fixing prices, according to the Departmen...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 14, 2005

Securities Groups at Odds with AICPA

In a scathing letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bond Market Association and the Securities Industry Association took issue with what they called “anti-investor positions” taken by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.The two securities groups object to an AIC...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 13, 2005

Sarbox ABCs for the Rank and File

Aquila, Inc., an electric utilities company, is so serious about complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Act internal-controls rules that it’s requiring all employees — from line workers to the chief executive officer — to complete an online ethics training program.Indeed, the problems featured in the prog...

By Helen Shaw • Oct. 13, 2005

Prosecutors Challenge Legal Defense Fees

An unprecedented legal maneuver by federal prosecutors may threaten the legal fees that corporate executives rely on from their employers, according to The National Law Journal.The maneuver surfaced during the retrial of two former executives of Westar Energy Inc., chairman and chief executive of...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 12, 2005