SEC’s Casey Rips Rating Agency “Oligopoly”

The Securities and Exchange Commission should strip language from its rules that have set up and preserved “a valuable franchise for the large rating agencies, while simultaneously inoculating them from market competition,” SEC Commissioner Kathleen Casey has asserted. Declaring it to be an essen...

By David Katz • Feb. 10, 2009

Top Enforcer Leaves SEC

 Linda Chatman Thomsen is leaving the Securities and Exchange Commission after nearly four years as the regulator’s enforcement chief.She will return to the private sector, the SEC said today. The SEC’s announcement has been largely expected since Mary Schapiro took over as the commission’s chair...

By Sarah Johnson • Feb. 9, 2009

RIM Execs to Pay for Mispriced Options

Research In Motion Ltd. and eight executives have settled charges from Canadian regulators over the company’s historical stock-option-granting practices.Four of the eight executives — including two finance executives — agreed to pay a total of $75 million (U.S.). The settlements still must be app...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 6, 2009

SEC to Get Tougher on Corporate Wrongdoers

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro announced Friday she would make it easier for SEC staff to launch formal investigations of corporations, and she overturned her predecessor’s policy of requiring commission approval for levying financial penalties against public companies....

By Tim Reason • Feb. 6, 2009

Six Degrees of Bernie Madoff

The customer list for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was released on Wednesday as part of a New York bankruptcy court filing. The list that runs 162 pages is filled with the names and addresses of individuals, companies, trusts, pension plans and other entities that invested in the firm ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Feb. 5, 2009

Green light for France’s green aid

The European Commission has, for the first time, given the green light to a state-aid scheme specifically designed to help producers of relatively green products.The scheme, which is one of the measures adopted by France to tackle the current economic crisis, will allow both national and local au...

By European Voice Staff • Feb. 4, 2009

Warning Signs

Bart Le Blanc is certainly reassured by the fact that risk management has “always been an integral part” of the company where he works. Urenco, a privately held joint venture with German, Dutch and British owners, is one of a handful of uranium-enrichment companies that supply fuel for nuclear re...

By Janet Kersnar • Feb. 2, 2009

Run for Cover

Out of sight, out of mind. CFOs rarely give much thought to credit insurance, delegating responsibility for it deep within the finance function. But as insurers withdraw cover in the face of surging claims (see “Bold Claims” at the end of this article), trade credit is now high on the agenda of m...

By Jason Karaian • Feb. 2, 2009

Lights Out for Ex-CFO in Revenue Scheme

A federal court has entered a final judgment against a former finance executive whom the Securities and Exchange Commission had charged in a fraudulent scheme to inflate revenue.Kevin Morano, the one-time CFO of Lumenis Ltd., an Israeli company that had executive offices in New York and whose sto...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 2, 2009

The Next Wave

The wounds of recession often encounter a particularly painful form of salt: litigation. Corporate attorneys stand ready to pour it on if they sense weakness in a rival, or as a way to compensate for their own economic woes. At the same time, regulators have gotten more aggressive, and the costs ...

By S.L. Mintz • Feb. 1, 2009

Delisting Dilemmas

From retailers and rent-a-car companies to banks and radio networks, the number of companies facing stock-exchange delisting is mounting by the day. Nasdaq booted a total of 85 companies for failing to meet listing requirements (or going bankrupt) in 2008, while the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)...

By Kate Plourd • Feb. 1, 2009

The SEC under Schapiro

Can Mary Schapiro change the Securities and Exchange Commission from hapless bystander to tough cop?A seasoned career regulator, the 53-year-old Schapiro was tapped by President Barack Obama to succeed Christopher Cox as chairman of the SEC, and people are hoping she can restore investor confiden...

By Edward Teach • Feb. 1, 2009

Getting Smaller, but Not Quieter

The world of high finance had already been brought low before the Madoff scandal rocked Wall Street in December. Even so, corporate finance officers shouldn’t write off the hedge-fund industry, which still serves as a hotbed of activist investors. “The activists aren’t going anywhere,” warns Jeff...

By Josh Hyatt • Feb. 1, 2009

Judge: OK to Sue Deloitte over Parmalat

In a ruling that could have sweeping implications, a federal judge says plaintiffs can sue Deloitte & Touche, its former CEO, and its affiliates for the role of the firm’s Italian affiliate in the collapse of Italian dairy giant Parmalat Finanziaria in 2003.Deloitte Touche Tomatsu “exercised ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 30, 2009

Ex-CFO Confesses to Tax Evasion

The former CFO of GlobeTel Communications has pled to tax-evasion charges, federal regulators have announced.Thomas Jimenez was charged earlier this month on a single count of obstructing and impeding the due administration of the tax laws. According to regulators, he was responsible for preparin...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 30, 2009

Big Government Fights Back

Few now doubt that the world economy is in its most parlous state since the 1930s. Demand is slumping across the globe as firms and consumers are battered by a pernicious, self-reinforcing bombardment of dysfunctional financial markets, falling wealth, higher unemployment and rampant fear. The IM...

By Economist Staff • Jan. 29, 2009

Obama Rallies Business Allies

Taking a page directly out of the playbook of his immediate predecessor, President Barack Obama on Wednesday convened a meeting of business leaders and then trotted them out to promote legislation he wants – in this case the $825 billion stimulus bill up for a vote in the House today.Appearing in...

By Roll Call Staff • Jan. 28, 2009

Jabil Circuit Settles Last of Backdating Issues

Jabil Circuit can finally put its stock option backdating problems behind it. It announced that a U.S. District Court dismissed with prejudice a class action lawsuit filed against it, its directors and certain current and former officers, and KPMG LLP.The maker of electronic components for mobile...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 28, 2009

State and Local Government Deficits Soar: GAO

Projected operating deficits of state and local governments have sharply risen, and now are estimated to total $312 billion over a two-year period, the Government Accountability Office says in a new calculation. The operating deficit will be about $131 billion for 2009 and $181 billion for 2010, ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 27, 2009

Ex-AIG Exec Gets Four Years in Fraud Scheme

A federal judge sentenced a former American International Group executive to four years in prison for his role in a $500-million fraudulent scheme to manipulate AIG’s financial statements. The ex-AIG vice president of reinsurance, Christian M. Milton, together with four former officials of AIG’s ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 27, 2009

Dollar Thrifty Is First Firm to Get NYSE Market-cap Break

The New York Stock Exchange, which had announced a temporary relaxation of its listing requirements in light of the rapid market-capitalization decline of many of its listed firms, applied a new, lower threshold in not delisting Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group shares.The Big Board acknowledged th...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 27, 2009

Schapiro Distances Herself from Cox

Companies that try to stay on top of the ever-changing regulations coming out of Washington may have to shift gears under the new Securities and Exchange Commission leadership. Incoming chair Mary Schapiro — the Democrat whose nomination by the Senate was approved last week — plans to slow down s...

By Sarah Johnson • Jan. 26, 2009

Hayes Lemmerz Fines: $50,000 for CFO, $10,000 for CEO

A federal court fined and imposed a $50,000 fine on a former CFO of Hayes Lemmerz International Inc., and a $10,000 fine on a former CEO, after a jury earlier found that the two men had violated securities laws in an accounting scheme.The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan f...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 26, 2009

Cunning Moneyman

There are two true grey eminences in the economic-policy world today. These two old men, a year either side of 80 and either side of the Atlantic, are called in when political and economic problems are deemed either intractable or scary. Their appointment calms nerves and sends a message that the...

By European Voice Staff • Jan. 26, 2009

Finance Sends Geithner’s Nomination to Full Senate

The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday voted 18-5 in favor of Timothy Geithner’s nomination to serve as Treasury secretary after a temperamental hearing one day earlier that included a few lashings from Republican Senators.Voting against the nomination were the Finance Committee’s ranking membe...

By Roll Call Staff • Jan. 22, 2009