Sarbox Support Groups

Sometimes you need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. As companies struggle to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires them to document and obtain audits of their internal controls, some finance executives are organizing peer groups to share experiences, compare notes on their au...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 10, 2004

Conference Calls Can Air Dirty Laundry

During a conference call to discuss second-quarter results at Sears, Roebuck & Co., CEO Alan Lacy was prepared for a barrage of questions from analysts about why the company missed earnings expectations. What he was not prepared for was a question from an irate customer who had a bad experien...

By Joseph McCafferty • Nov. 9, 2004

Bribes and the Balance Sheet

Presentations in hand, six members of a U.S. architecture firm flew to London this year to meet with a high Russian provincial official. About three months earlier, the politician had asked the firm to submit a proposal to develop a waterfront area in the province. But when the architects arrived...

By David Katz • Nov. 8, 2004

The Telephone Game

It’s been just over two years since Sarbanes-Oxley began requiring companies to provide employees with a way to anonymously report financial misdeeds. In practice, that has usually meant setting up telephone hotlines, most of them open to any type of ethics complaint. But along with each call abo...

By Tim Reason • Nov. 8, 2004

Votes All Counted in First Enron Trial

In federal court in Houston, a jury convicted five of six defendants in the first criminal trial involving former energy giant Enron Corp. Four former executives of Merrill Lynch — James A. Brown, Daniel Bayly, William Fuhs, and Robert Furst — and a former mid-level Enron manager, Dan Boyle, were...

By Dave Cook • Nov. 4, 2004

Laggards Warned on Sarbox 404 Compliance

This summer, CFO.com reported that many companies were falling behind in their preparations for Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. (See “No Vacation from Section 404 Prep Work.”) Section 404 — which will guide how auditors report on companies’ assessments of their internal controls — becomes ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 3, 2004

SEC Enlivens ‘Quiet Periods’

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed rules that would allow the largest companies to do a lot more talking before they issue shares of stock. The new regulations would permit some executives to take part in interviews and possibly allow companies to advertise offerings on televisio...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 28, 2004

Anthem Subpoenaed in Insurance Probe

Anthem Inc. has received a subpoena from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is investigating how the big health insurer handles its business with brokers, according to Reuters.The subpoena “just lays out some standard questions about commission and bonus structure,” Anthem spoke...

By Stephen Green • Oct. 27, 2004

Big Data Issues at Smaller Companies

Many data-management requirements, most notably the dictates of Sarbanes-Oxley, initially applied only to large public corporations, but their effects are already trickling down to small and midsize businesses (SMBs). These firms must manage data just as professionally as the big guys, providing ...

By Anne Stuart • Oct. 27, 2004

Saving Gracefully

Remember those virtual pets that were all the rage a few holiday seasons back? Inanimate though they may be, the still-popular toys require proper care and feeding. Fail to provide those essentials, and you soon find yourself looking for a virtual pet cemetery.Information is much like that: each ...

By Anne Stuart • Oct. 27, 2004

Courts and Torts: Workplace Rumors

Marie Leone’s “Courts and Torts” column appears monthly. Contact her at [email protected] the fifth in a series of a flip-flops by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), management came out the winner in June when the NLRB sided with IBM Corp. and ruled that the “Weingarten right” does no...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 26, 2004

Aon Seen Sinking into the Marsh

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigations are sending broadening shock-waves through the property-casualty insurance industry, claiming the chairman of the word’s biggest insurance broker and reportedly soon to ensnare the second-biggest one.On Monday, Jeffrey Greenberg, chairman a...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 26, 2004

Marsh CEO Expected to Resign

Jeffrey Greenberg, the chief executive and chairman of Marsh & McLennan Cos., is expected to resign from the insurance brokerage, the Financial Times Web site reported late Friday.The move is expected to help ignite settlement talks with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who sued the c...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 25, 2004

AIG Faces New Grand Jury Probe

American International Group Inc. announced on Thursday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana has launched a federal grand jury investigation into its dealings with cell-phone distributor Brightpoint Inc.The Securities and Exchange Commission brought civil charges a...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 22, 2004

An Industry Mired in Scandal

First came investment banking; then mutual funds; now the insurance industry is mired in scandal, the latest target of Eliot Spitzer, New York’s formidable attorney general. On October 14th he filed civil charges against Marsh & McLennan, the world’s biggest insurance broker, and announced se...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 22, 2004

The Insurance Scandal: Just How Rotten?

First came investment banking; then mutual funds; now the insurance industry is mired in scandal, the latest target of Eliot Spitzer, New York’s formidable attorney general. On October 14th he filed civil charges against Marsh & McLennan, the world’s biggest insurance broker, and announced se...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 22, 2004

Two Trials for Kenneth Lay

Former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay will face not one criminal trial, but two.Lay, former Enron chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling, and former chief accountant Rick Causey had requested separate trials in federal court in Houston. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake did rule that the four crim...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 21, 2004

Bumper Crop of Corporate Probes

Stephen Taub’s opinion column appears on Wednesday. Contact him at [email protected] Mae, Krispy Kreme, Marsh & McLennan, American International Group. This year’s “fall harvest” — another bounty of companies under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Depar...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2004

Are Health Insurers Next for Spitzer?

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer now has the cross-hairs trained on the health insurance industry, according to The New York Post.The newspaper reported that Spitzer — who late last week socked major brokers and insurers of commercial lines when he accused Marsh & McLennan of sol...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2004

Marsh Suspends Use of MSAs

Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. announced on Friday that its risk and insurance services subsidiary will immediately suspend its practice of market services agreements (MSAs) with insurance carriers, in light of the allegations and questions raised by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer,...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 18, 2004

Rite Aid Exec, 76, Gets 10 Years in Prison

Franklin Brown, former vice chairman and chief counsel of Rite Aid Corp., was sentenced last week to 10 years in federal prison for his role in the massive accounting fraud at the company. He was convicted in a jury trial last October of crimes including making false statements to the Securities ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 18, 2004

Flu-Shot Maker Faces Federal Probes

Chiron Corp., which recently suspended production of its Fluvirin flu vaccine, is being investigated by at least three federal agencies.Officials at the Emeryville, Calif.-based company said in a regulatory filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an informal inquiry to det...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 15, 2004

Risks and Benefits: The CFO as CRO?

At first glance, chief financial officers seem splendidly positioned to be the czars of enterprise risk management.Indeed, many already oversee one traditional area of risk management: the operational hazards often covered by property-casualty insurance. Typically, the corporate risk manager — wh...

By David Katz • Oct. 14, 2004

A Few Good Suppliers

Cut costs by trimming the number of your suppliers. Heard it before? It’s the business equivalent of “diet and exercise.” But paring down to just a few suppliers can be too much of a good thing. The Hackett Group, an Atlanta-based business-advisory firm, says that many leading companies are actua...

By Ilan Mochari • Oct. 14, 2004

Pension Funds Angle for ”Proxy Access”

Yesterday, four of the country’s largest pension funds threatened to shake up the proxy process.The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the AFSCME Employees Pension Plan, and the Illinois State Board of Investment announced a joint ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 13, 2004