Expense Management: Better Ways to Buy

At the height of the dot-com boom, in January 2000, the term “E-procurement” appeared in these pages for the first time. Virtually synonymous, then, with E-commerce, the term joined a burgeoning pantheon of Internet buzzwords and promised a revolution in how companies bought and sold everything f...

By Yasmin Ghahremani • Sept. 1, 2008

Blame Game: A Jury Tackles CFO-CEO Fraud

How does a jury react when a company’s ex-CEO and ex-CFO both face civil accounting-fraud charges, and the panel must decide who’s liable: one of them, both, or neither?Such a jury deliberation — similar to those in the cases of Enron, Worldcom, HealthSouth, Tyco, and others — played out in a muc...

By Roy Harris • Aug. 29, 2008

Companies Get Protected from DoJ Pressure

The U.S. Department of Justice revised elements of a controversial internal policy governing federal investigation and prosecution of corporate crimes. The revision — making it illegal for the government to demand certain privileged information from companies — comes in response to criticism of ...

By Kate Plourd • Aug. 28, 2008

Con-way Settles SEC Foreign-payoff Charges

Freight-shipping company Con-way Inc. agreed to pay $300,000 to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that improper payments made by a unit to numerous government officials violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.Emery Transnational, a Philippines-based firm controlled by the San F...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 28, 2008

SEC Eases Filing Rules for Non-U.S. Firms

On a busy day in which it also drew a roadmap for moving to international financial reporting standards, the Securities and Exchange Commission moved to simplify disclosure requirements for foreign companies offering securities in the U.S.Under the amendments — designed to make it easier for U....

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 27, 2008

A Broadcom Apology, while Ex-CFO Waits

Broadcom Corp. cofounder Henry Samueli, scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 8 on a felony count of lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission, apologized to the judge in a two-page written statement.Fellow cofounder Henry T. Nicholas III and former Broadcom CFO William Ruehle, meanwhile, are sti...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 26, 2008

Biden’s CFO Contributors Are a Tiny Group

Long-time Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden has had a relatively small following among political contributors who are CFOs — especially compared to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, who recently chose him as his running mate.Since the 2004 presidential election, a mere 11 fi...

By Kate Plourd • Aug. 26, 2008

In Quest for Answers, CFO Is Put on Leave

The chairman and CEO of Quest Resource Corp. and two related energy companies resigned after the discovery of questionable transfers of $10 million in company funds to an entity controlled by the CEO. At the same time, the CFO was placed on administrative leave while an investigation is conducted...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 25, 2008

Sarbox Stays: PCAOB Judged Constitutional

A federal appeals court decided Friday that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that created it, are constitutional. The ruling denies a claim that the existence of the PCAOB violates the Constitution’s separation-of-powers principle.The decision by the U.S. ...

By Alan Rappeport • Aug. 22, 2008

Hayes Lemmerz Ex-CFO Loses Civil Fraud Case

Correction:This story has been updated to reflect that the jury ruled in favor of ex-CEO Ranko Cucuz, and against the Securities and Exchange Commission, on three of four counts. A previous version of this article, and its headline, said only that the CEO, along with the CFO, had lost the case. C...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 21, 2008

How a CFO Stole from Children’s Hospital

In connection with a scheme that the prosecutor described as “the lowest of the low,” the former chief financial officer of Shriners Hospital for Children in St. Louis pleaded guilty to defrauding the institution of more than $828,000,Robert Steven Brodzin’s plea was to one felony count of mail f...

By Stephen Taub and Roy Harris • Aug. 21, 2008

Brokers Are in Auction-rate Cross-hairs

Some regulators appear to be shifting the focus in their investigations of abuses in the auction-rate securities market, concentrating more on brokerages that sold the securities, and less on the banks that created them.On-site inspections of about 40 brokerages involved in the ARS market will be...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 21, 2008

Harvey Pitt Returns to Government

Former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt has been invited once again to be securities sheriff. This time, his work will be on the state level, and will involve only one investigation. On Tuesday, Pitt was appointed deputy attorney general for the state of Alabama to investi...

By Sarah Johnson • Aug. 20, 2008

“Nobody Gets a Pass” in SEC ARS Probe

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into auction-rate securities abuses is ranging far beyond the five banks that have already agreed to buy back billions of dollars of ARS from customers, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told reporters.“We have over a dozen pending investigations ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 19, 2008

SEC Halts “Pump and Dump” Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission has once again demonstrated that its regulatory tentacles reach well beyond U.S. borders.The regulator has obtained an emergency court order freezing the profits from an alleged $13 million international fraud involving a Seattle-area microcap company and a ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 15, 2008

Cuomo Settles JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley ARS Claims

JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley have collectively agreed to return over $7 billion to investors who purchased auction rate securities under a settlement announced by New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo. The agreements settle allegations that JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley m...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 14, 2008

SEC Takes Bite Out of Apple’s Ex-Counsel

The former general counsel of Apple Inc., Nancy R. Heinen, agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission stock-option backdating charges.Heinen agreed, without admitting to or denying the allegations, to terms that bar her from serving as an officer or director of any pu...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 14, 2008

Phantom Menace

Not all short lists are worth being on. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced rules on July 15th to restrict short-selling of 19 financial stocks. Many suspected that America’s market regulator wanted to resuscitate the shares of these firms, especially those of Lehman Brothers,...

By Economist Staff • Aug. 14, 2008

Charlotte Russe Tries a Poison Pill

Women’s mall-based specialty retailer Charlotte Russe Holding adopted a stockholder rights plan, saying it isn’t designed to ward off any specific takeover threat.The San Diego-based company did say, however, that “it should deter any attempt to acquire Charlotte Russe in a manner or on terms not...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 14, 2008

SemGroup Facing Chapter 11 Fraud Probe

The U.S. Justice Department is seeking to investigate claims of fraudulent trading that may have resulted in last month’s financial collapse of SemGroup, a Tulsa, Okla.-based energy trader, Reuters reported. RZB Finance LLC, SemGroup’s lender, said in court documents that the Blackstone Group, ...

By Alan Rappeport • Aug. 13, 2008

Survival in the Age of Risk

Faced with threats from all quarters — recession and credit crunch, heated global competition, continuing Sarbanes-Oxley pressures — companies are making intensive risk management a top priority, and once again CFOs find themselves on the front lines.Many CFOs now must deal not only with managing...

By Marshall Krantz • Aug. 13, 2008

Did CFO Embezzle $3m to Invest in the Market?

The former finance executive for a nonprofit that operates a museum parking lot in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park pleaded not guilty to charges that he embezzled more than $3 million from the company.Gregory Colley, who worked for the Music Community Concourse Partnership, which manages undergr...

By Stephen Taub and Roy Harris • Aug. 12, 2008

It’s Twilight for Sun Communities Ex-CFO

The former CFO of Sun Communities Inc. took the brunt of Securities and Exchange Commission charges at the end of an accounting-practices investigation that originally had targeted the CEO and controller as well.Without admitting to or denying the findings, Jeffrey P. Jorissen consented to a fina...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 12, 2008

SEC Looks at Calpine, National City

Two companies, power producer Calpine Corp. and financial services company National City Corp., disclosed in regulatory filings that they are targets of unrelated probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission.Calpine said it had been contacted by the SEC and had had meetings with the SEC staff...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 11, 2008

Microcaps Charged in Capital-Raising Scam

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged six microcap companies on Thursday for their roles in an alleged scheme that put billions of improperly registered shares into the public markets. Microcap are the smallest public companies in terms of market capitalization that still meet exchange l...

By Kate Plourd • Aug. 7, 2008