Funds Ordered to End Broker Incentives

The Securities and Exchange Commission ordered mutual funds to stop paying higher commissions to brokers who promote the companies’ funds and required portfolio managers to reveal investments in funds they supervise, Bloomberg reported.Wednesday’s SEC action continues the agency’s crackdown on th...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 19, 2004

Janus Firm Settles Fraud Charges

Registered investment adviser Janus Capital Management LLC (JCM) agreed to pay $100 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle charges that the Denver-based company entered into “undisclosed market-timing agreements with certain investors.”As part of a settlement including ...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 19, 2004

SEC Could Sue Tyson Foods

Tyson Foods Inc. is on notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly failing to disclose perks it handed out to some of its executives.The SEC staff is recommending that the commission bring a civil law suit against the meat-producing giant, and possibly seek monetary damages.T...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 18, 2004

Canada Opens Probe of Nortel Accounting

Telecom-equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp. is facing legal scrutiny on its home turf as well as in the United States.Nortel, said to be Canada’s largest high-tech company, announced Monday that it had received a letter from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Integrated Market Enforcement Team...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 18, 2004

Insurers Could Pay for Patent Infringements

Corporations could have more protection from intellectual-property-related lawsuits than they might have thought.In what the National Underwriter Online Property & Casualty News Service called a “precedent-setting decision,” a federal appeals court panel has ruled that commercial insurance po...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 17, 2004

Say It Ain’t So, Spidey

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued three people for manipulating the stock of Stan Lee Media, an online entertainment company founded by the comic book legend that collapsed in late 2000.The SEC sued company co-founder Peter Paul, former senior operations executive Stephen Gordon; an...

By Ed Zwirn • Aug. 17, 2004

Life Insurer CFOs Concerned about Sarbox Costs

Most life insurance CFOs are worried about the costs associated with implementing Sarbanes-Oxley and the demands required to meet the internal control requirements of Section 404.These are among the key findings from the most recent survey of 32 finance chiefs from North American life insurance c...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 16, 2004

SEC Staff Mulls Compliance Delays

The Securities and Exchange Commission is giving serious thought to putting off corporate implementation of some of its rulemaking initiatives in order to give senior managers and auditors time to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley’s internal controls provisions in a letter-perfect way.No telling yet wha...

By Craig Schneider • Aug. 16, 2004

Sarbox 404 Costs 63 Percent Higher than Expected

Companies seem to be shelling out much more money than they had figured on to comply with Section 404 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act.The provision, which goes into effect Nov. 15, will cost public companies 63 percent on average more than they had previously thought, according to a new survey by Fina...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 12, 2004

Plea Hearing Cancelled for Boeing’s Ex-CFO

Michael Sears has received what’s likely to be a temporary reprieve. The Aug. 11 hearing at which the former Boeing CFO was planning to plead guilty to helping a former Air Force official get a job at the aerospace giant while she was overseeing a huge contract was canceled by prosecutors, accor...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 11, 2004

SEC Fines Insurers $20 Million

The Securities and Exchange Commission has fined a number of insurance companies $20 million for “facilitating market timing of mutual funds through the sale of variable annuities.”The insurance companies include three subsidiaries of Conseco, Inc.: CIHC, Inc.; Conseco Services, LLC; and Conseco...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 10, 2004

CFO Takes Leave, Citing SEC Scrutiny

The CFO of ABX Air Inc., Duane Kimble, agreed with the air-cargo company that he would take an immediate personal leave of absence from the after being informed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that the agency is considering bringing a civil action suit against him.The warning to Kimble ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 6, 2004

Sarbox Spurs Technology Spending, CFOs Say

About half of 177 CFOs and managing directors of U.S.-based multinationals responding to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey say their companies are mulling buying new technologies over the next 12 months to improve their current reporting infrastructure.Further, 46 percent of the executives ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 5, 2004

Bristol-Myers to Pay $150 Million in SEC Settlement

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. will pay $150 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that alleged the pharmaceutical giant inflated sales and earnings to fool investors. The fine, double what published reports had predicted, was settled without company officials admitting or denyin...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 5, 2004

SEC Settles with Halliburton

The Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against Halliburton Co. and two former finance executives for failure to disclose a change to its accounting practice during a period when vice president Dick Cheney served as chief executive officer.Halliburton also agreed to pay a $7.5 mill...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 4, 2004

Unfair Opinions?

The latest move to clean up perceived conflicts of interest on Wall Street is coming from the Street itself, as NASD contemplates new rules for fairness opinions.Formal opinions about whether a merger or acquisition price falls within a fair range have been standard in deals since 1985, when the ...

By Tim Reason • Aug. 3, 2004

Ex-Enron Division Chief Pleads Guilty

Kenneth Rice, the former chief executive officer of Enron Corp.’s high-speed Internet division, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of securities fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, according to several news accounts.In 2003, reported the Associated Press, Rice was charged with sellin...

By Craig Schneider • Aug. 3, 2004

SEC: 1,300 ”Whistles” Blown Each Day

The Securities and Exchange Commission has fielded nearly 250,000 tips about possible securities-law violations so far this year, according to USA Today.In fact, the commission receives more than 1,300 emails each day through its online complaint service, according to the paper, citing John Stark...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 3, 2004

Picking Up the Pieces

When Martha Stewart was denied a new trial last month, shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. took another dip, further illustrating the particular peril faced by companies closely identified with a “brand name.” As many have learned lately, corporate reputations polished for decades to a...

By Roy Harris • Aug. 1, 2004

Watch Your Back

When you consider all the bad things that happen to good plans, it’s not surprising how often CEOs blame poor performance on poor luck. Product launches flop when customer demand is weaker than expected. A brilliantly conceived merger becomes a value-destroying menace when integration fails. Plan...

By Don Durfee • Aug. 1, 2004

Charges for ex-CFO of Qwest Wireless

A former CFO for a subsidiary of Qwest Communications International Inc. is the subject of civil fraud charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.The SEC complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, alleged that former Qwest Wireless chief financial officer Michael Felicissimo ...

By Ed Zwirn • July 29, 2004

Procurement Pros Swap Staff for IT

Smaller, faster, better: Apparently this high-tech mantra also applies to the corporate procurement process. A study by The Hackett Group has found that companies with the most productive procurement processes operate with half the staff of their peers, are more adept at leveraging information te...

By Marie Leone • July 28, 2004

Crisis? What Crisis?

In years to come, the Swiss staffing firm Adecco may well take its place on the syllabuses of business schools around the world. As a textbook example of how to mislead and vex investors, it’s hard to beat this scandal that never was.The story dates back to January 12, when Adecco announced in a ...

By Jason Karaian • July 27, 2004

No 9/11 ”Insider Profits,” SEC Finds

In the period before September 11, no speculators made trades in the public markets with the apparent intent of profiting from the terrorist attacks, according to a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission.The SEC, which said that it began an investigation the day after the attacks, repor...

By Ed Zwirn • July 27, 2004

Halliburton May Settle Cheney-Era Probe

Halliburton Co. may settle a two-year-old probe of its accounting practices during the period that Vice President Dick Cheney ran the company, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.The wire service reported that the energy services and infrastructure services company has ...

By Stephen Taub • July 26, 2004