Regulation & Compliance: Page 52
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xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Jim Ayala, Chief Executive, Ayala Land
There’s something unexpected about Jaime “Jim” Ayala, chiefexecutive of Ayala Land, the Philippines’ largest and oldest real estate company: he’s not an Ayala. He doesn’t hail from the nation’s long-standing, leading business family (Jaime Zobel Ayala is chairman of Ayala Group). Never mind: this...
By Tom Leander • July 8, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Accountant Uses Toilet Humor in Check Scam
He may be no Einstein. But a former Tishman Construction Corp. project accountant alleged to have stolen $2.8 million in a check-writing scam certainly has a gift for toilet humor.John Hoeffner was charged with stealing $2.8 million from Tishman in a phony invoicing scheme connected with a projec...
By Stephen Taub and Roy Harris • July 3, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
UnitedHealth Settles Backdating Suit
UnitedHealth Group will pay $895 million to settle a class action lawsuit challenging its historical stock options practices. The company said the proposed deal fully resolves claims against it, against all current officers and directors named in the lawsuit, and certain former officers and direc...
By Stephen Taub • July 2, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
SEC Charges Microtune’s Ex-CEO, Ex-CFO
The former chairman and CEO of Microtune Inc., along with its former CFO and general counsel, were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the same stock-option backdating case that Microtune itself settled this week.Charged with civil fraud counts were Nancy Richardson, the ex-CFO, ...
By Roy Harris and Stephen Taub • July 2, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Told to “Do Something” with Funds, He Stole Them
A former Oregon Department of Education accountant who stole nearly $1 million in school funds — using some of the money for his online gun and ammunition business — told the judge a peculiar story of having been confused by superiors who said he should “do something with the money.” He was sente...
By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Microtune’s Tune Is a Consent Decree
Microtune Inc. agreed to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges stemming from an investigation into the company’s historical stock option granting practices.Under the deal, the designer and marketer of radio-frequency products for the broadband communications and transportation electro...
By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
SEC Wonders: Who’s to Pay for Proxy Fights?
For the first time ever, the Securities and Exchange Commission has asked the Delaware Supreme Court to weigh in on an aspect of the director nominating process: whether companies or shareholders should foot the cost of a proxy fight.The regulator asked the state court to rule on which parties sh...
By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Senate Bill: No More Arm-twisting
A bill introduced Thursday night would make it illegal for federal enforcement agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission — to demand documents that are protected by client-attorney confidentiality in exchange for lenient treatment in federal prosecutions.The Attorney-Client Priv...
By Kate Plourd • June 27, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Navistar Gets Current on Financials, Relists
Navistar International has filed its quarterly reports for the first and second quarters of 2008, bringing it up-to-date after years of restatements and delinquencies. As a result, on Monday the truck and engine maker will be reinstated on the New York Stock Exchange under its original ticker sym...
By Stephen Taub • June 27, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Changes Near for Oil and Gas Reporting Rules
On Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new set of rules that would change the way oil and gas companies report their reserves on financial statements. Following 60 days of public comment, the commission will take a final vote on adopting the changes.The new rules would requ...
By Kate Plourd • June 27, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
The Exxon Valdez Crashes into Fair Value Accounting
Nearly two decades after the Exxon Valdez spilled millions of gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the Supreme Court ordered that punitive damages paid by the oil company should not exceed the compensatory damages it paid. That ruling cut Exxon’s punitive damages — initially set at ...
By Tim Reason • June 26, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Angry Cox Expects SEC to Grow, Not Die
Rarely in its 74-year history has the Securities and Exchange Commission been so squarely on the griddle, with new reforms seeming to target its very existence and Chairman Christopher Cox personally being criticized as “peripheral,” in the words of a critical Monday profile on the Wall Street Jo...
By Roy Harris • June 26, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Senate Banking Committee Okays SEC Nominees
Three Securities and Exchange Commission nominees won approval from the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, according to press reports. Their nominations are now being sent to the full Senate, where reportedly they are likely to be confirmed. One of the nominees, Troy Paredes, was named by Pre...
By Stephen Taub • June 26, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
SEC: Credit Ratings Are a Crutch
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday continued its assault on the central role credit-rating agencies have played in the evaluation of securities. Two weeks after floating new rules to mitigate the agencies’ conflicts of interest and require them to distinguish among different typ...
By Kate Plourd • June 26, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Reports of the SEC’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
Some suggest that the Securities and Exchange Commission is hurtling toward extinction. On Monday, for example, a Wall Street Journal front-page analysis of Chairman Christopher Cox’s “low key leadership” — especially during the Bear Stearns crisis — described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s ...
By Roy Harris • June 25, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Rigas Inmates Get a Shave: Three Years Off Terms
Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas and son Timothy, Adelphia’s fomer CFO, had their prison terms trimmed by three years in a resentencing that came after their convictions for roles in the company’s massive fraud. John Rigas, the 83-year-old former chairman of the cable company, along wit...
By Stephen Taub • June 25, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
SEC Begins Study of Disclosure Overhaul
The Securities and Exchange Commission — seemingly in danger of having its mandate severely diluted — made public its initiative to consider overhauling how public companies, mutual funds, brokers, and other regulated entities disclose information.The goal of the “21st Century Disclosure Initiati...
By Stephen Taub • June 24, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Royal Dutch to Shell Out $120 Million
Royal Dutch Shell has agreed to pay $120 million to settle a class action lawsuit led by the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement Board and the Public School Employees’ Retirement Board.The energy giant had been accused of overstating oil and natural gas reserves and artificially inflating st...
By Stephen Taub • June 23, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Midlevel Insider-Trading Case Settled
A former Williams-Sonoma Inc. finance manager has settled civil charges that he traded the company’s stock ahead of its report of bad news.Adrian Di Vita, who was a financial planning and analysis manager for the specialty retailer, agreed to pay $76,932.80 in disgorgement of illegally earned gai...
By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Despite Subprime Mess, D&O Still Cheap
The market for directors and officers insurance has remained soft despite a rise in litigation spurred by the subprime-mortgage crisis and tight credit environment, according to a survey by Towers Perrin, a reinsurance strategy firm.Last year, as prices for D&O insurance grew cheaper and poli...
By Alan Rappeport • June 20, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Cendant Scandal Refuses to Die
Long before Enron and WorldCom, the $3.2 billion fraud by Cendant, revealed in 1998, has spawned numerous lawsuits and landed two key perpetrators in prison. In 2005, E. Kirk Shelton, the company’s former vice chairman, got 10 years; in January 2007, ex-chairman Walter Forbes was hit with more th...
By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Deloitte Is Protected in “Insolvency” Ruling
A recent Pennsylvania Court ruling favoring Deloitte & Touche seems to restrict a company’s ability to win a case against an accountantcy for actions that lead to the company’s “deepening insolvency,” unless the accountant is negligent in other ways as well.The issue arose in a lawsuit that R...
By Alan Rappeport • June 19, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
A Hedge Too Far: Bear Ex-Managers Arrested
Former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi were arrested, and are expected to be indicted on securities fraud charges after a year-long federal investigation that looked into the collapse of their subprime-mortgage-investment-heavy fund.Separately, after their arrest ...
By Stephen Taub • June 19, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Regulators of the World Unite
Even as participants in U.S. capital markets wonder when American companies may be required to adopt international accounting standards, the world’s securities regulators took steps today to increase their oversight of the body responsible for setting those standards. A press release issued by th...
By Tim Reason and Sarah Johnson • June 18, 2008 -
xdfolio. "Policies Standards Compliance" [Illustration]. Retrieved from Pixabay.
Astonishing Sentence for Astonishing Scam
A former CFO who was an accused mastermind of a scam that investigators said had “astonishing scope” was sentenced to time served, which amounts to seven months in prison. The key to the soft sentence in the more than $680-million scheme, according to federal prosecutors: his cooperation in a cas...
By Stephen Taub • June 17, 2008
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