Full Steam Ahead?

Diplomatic and trade relations between Europe and the US may be somewhat frosty these days, but there’s one area where transatlantic bonhomie is at an all-time high: securities regulation. In January William Donaldson, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), paid a visit to B...

By Ben McLannahan • May 3, 2004

Pitt Lambastes SEC Board-Nomination Plan

Harvey Pitt, the former chairman Securities and Exchange Commission, has criticized the SEC’s plans to give some investors a greater voice in nominating candidates to companies’ boards of directors.In a speech several days ago at a conference hosted by Compliance Week, Pitt — a columnist for the ...

By Stephen Taub • April 30, 2004

BP Chief Pans Accounting Rules

In words that would suggest the need for international accounting standards, Lord Browne of Madingley, the chief executive officer of BP Plc., criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission for applying its recently instituted guidelines on oil-reserve reporting only to the Gulf of Mexico, acc...

By Stephen Taub • April 29, 2004

Calpers Nixes Nominees at 11 Companies

Calpers, the nation’s biggest pension fund, announced on Monday that it will withhold proxy votes for board-of-director nominees at 11 companies, including Verizon, Merck, Adobe, and Alcoa.In most cases, such as Adobe, Merck, and Verizon, Calpers is opposing nominees who sit on audit committees t...

By Stephen Taub • April 27, 2004

Who’s in Charge of Sarbox Compliance?

Who’s minding the store when it comes to corporate compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?The answer apparently depends on the size of the company, according to a new survey from Parson Consulting. While 25 percent of larger companies favor a single Sarbox compliance officer, another 25 percent b...

By Stephen Taub • April 27, 2004

Spitzer Subpoenas Biggest Insurance Brokerages

Following his investigation of conflicts of interest on Wall Street, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s seems to zeroing in on the insurance industry.Late last week, Marsh & McLennan, Aon Corp., and Willis Group Holdings, the three largest insurance brokers, all reported that the...

By Stephen Taub • April 26, 2004

Irate Shareholders Roil Utility’s Annual Meeting

This is clearly not your father’s annual-meeting season. Last week, a day after a fight broke out at Coca-Cola’s shareholder gathering, more than 200 attendees to PG&E Corp.’s annual meeting staged a raucous protest against the utility’s compensation practices.It seems they were not very happ...

By Stephen Taub • April 26, 2004

Calpers Chokes on Apple

During the current proxy season, Calpers may be making a fuss about withholding director votes. But so far, the campaign by the nation’s largest pension fund’s has amounted to little more than background noise.Last week, many shareholders voted against Calpers’ wishes at the annual meetings of at...

By Stephen Taub • April 26, 2004

Cendant Ends Staggered Board

Cendant Corp. is yet another company that is changing its policies to accommodate the sentiments of its shareholders.The New York-based travel and real estate company announced that shareholders approved a company proposal to declassify its board of directors, which means that the entire board wi...

By Stephen Taub • April 23, 2004

Skilling: Go Directly to Jail?

Is Jeffrey Skilling headed for the slammer, sooner rather than later?This is the latest question facing the former Enron Corp. chief executive officer, who has been charged with nearly three dozen counts of fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading related to the collapse of the energy giant. But th...

By Stephen Taub • April 23, 2004

Rite Aid Plea Agreement Thrown Out

About two weeks after a judge threw out the plea bargain for former Enron treasurer Lea Fastow, another high-profile corporate case has seen a plea deal set aside.Yesterday a federal judge rejected a plea agreement by prosecutors with Martin Grass, the former chief executive of Rite Aid Corp., sa...

By Stephen Taub • April 22, 2004

Scuffle at Coca-Cola Annual Meeting

Shareholder activism has apparently become a contact sport.A shareholder who accused Coca-Cola Co. of violating human rights in Colombia was shoved to the ground and forcibly removed from the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday, according to Reuters.Ray Rogers, reported the wire service, had be...

By Stephen Taub • April 22, 2004

The Great Inflatable Service Bill

In December, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP settled charges that it had overbilled clients by hundreds of millions of dollars by not passing on rebates received from travel agencies (class-action suits against KPMG and Ernst & Young are still pending). The new year brought the indictment of execu...

By Don Durfee • April 22, 2004

Computer Associates Fires Nine Employees

Computer Associates International Inc. is close to putting the finishing touches on a resolution to its accounting scandal.On Monday, the software giant announced that it had sacked five individuals in its finance department and four in its legal department. The firings, added the company, result...

By Stephen Taub • April 20, 2004

Qwest Prosecutors End Up Empty-Handed

In a federal court in Denver, the prosecution in the Qwest trial packed up for the weekend, empty-handed, with very little to show for a two-year investigation.Four former executives of Qwest Communications International Inc. — Grant Graham, former chief financial officer for Qwest’s global busin...

By Dave Cook • April 19, 2004

Repay That Loan Again, Scrushy Is Told

Former HealthSouth Corp. chief executive officer Richard Scrushy will be $25 million lighter when he defends charges that he led the company’s $2.7 billion fraud.The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed a lower-court ruling that the company’s founder must repay a $25 million loan to the company, accor...

By Stephen Taub • April 19, 2004

Filing Ever Faster

There is a paradox at the heart of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. On one hand, the law requires companies to provide more-detailed and more-accurate financial statements. On the other, it cuts the time to do so. As recently as last year, companies had 90 days to file 10-Ks and 45 days for 10-Qs....

By Don Durfee • April 19, 2004

Quagmire in Qwest Trial?

The jury in Qwest Communications International Inc. trial has reached a verdict on 24 counts. That’s a little more than halfway there, according to the judge.In a federal court in Denver, four former Qwest executives — Grant Graham, former chief financial officer for Qwest’s global business unit;...

By Dave Cook • April 15, 2004

Press Ask Quattrone Judge to Ease Off

On Tuesday, the judge in the retrial of former investment banker Frank Quattrone ordered news organizations not to reveal the names of jurors during the trial. Yesterday, eight organizations asked him to reconsider.When The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post set aside that long-observed pr...

By Dave Cook • April 15, 2004

SEC Orders Market-Timing Disclosures

The Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered mutual funds to make public their policies on “market timing” and on the disclosure of the holdings in their portfolios, according to Reuters.The rapid in-and-out trading that characterizes market timing is not illegal in and of itself, but most ...

By Dave Cook • April 14, 2004

Guilty Plea Planned by Former Boeing Exec

Darleen Druyun, Boeing Co.’s former vice president and deputy general manager of missile-defense systems, will plead guilty to conspiracy next week, according to wire service reports.She has been under investigation for possible conflicts of interest regarding a multibillion-dollar Air Force deal...

By Dave Cook • April 14, 2004

Ex-Goldman Economist Gets 33 Months

John Youngdahl, formerly an economist for Goldman Sachs & Co., was sentenced Friday to 33 months in prison for relaying an insider tip that gave Goldman an eight-minute head start worth $3.8 million.On October 31, 2001, the U.S. government announced that it would no longer issue the benchmark...

By Dave Cook • April 13, 2004

Trials and Errors

It’s been an uphill struggle. Amid great fanfare in 2000, Covisint wowed the procurement world when it launched its ambitious global online B2B marketplace for the car industry, supported by the likes of DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors. At the time, the project’s backers cr...

By Poul Funder Larsen • April 13, 2004

Pre-Trial Tribulations for Skilling

Former Enron Corp. chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling was picked up early Friday morning by New York City police looking for an “emotionally disturbed person” on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to the New York Daily News. Officers checked Skilling into New York Presbyterian Hospital....

By Dave Cook • April 12, 2004

Are Traders Jumping the Gun on Government Reports?

About two weeks ago, job seekers and President Bush received some welcome and unexpected news: Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the strongest month since April 2000. The March expansion was about triple the 103,000 increase that Wall Street pros were anticipating, CFO.com noted last we...

By Dave Cook • April 12, 2004