AB Volvo to Pay $19.6 Million in Iraqi Oil-for-Food Case

Swedish truck, bus, construction equipment company AB Volvo has agreed to pay $19.6 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges of making improper payments to Iraq under the United Nations Oil for Food Program.The regulator filed Foreign Corrupt Practices Act books-an...

By Stephen Taub • March 20, 2008

SEC Probes Bear Stearns’s Last Gasps

A week after Bear Stearns’s sudden meltdown, the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that the staff has been scrutinizing the firm’s actions made before it was acquired.The speedy acquisition of the firm by JP Morgan Chase & Co. on Sunday — with the help of the Federal Reserve — just ...

By Sarah Johnson • March 19, 2008

When CFO Talks, Will CEO Walk?

The former CFO of Qwest played a key role in a federal appeals Court’s decision on Monday to grant a new trial for Joe Nacchio, the company’s one-time chief executive. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge wrongly excluded expert testimony important to Nacchio’s defense i...

By Stephen Taub • March 18, 2008

Former Days Inn CFO Could Get More Days in Prison

Three years after receiving a one-year prison sentence for bank and mail fraud, former Days Inn CFO James Cutler could serve more time. An appeals court sided with U.S. prosecutors in its decision on Monday to reverse Cutler’s 2005 sentencing. Along with the one year in prison, the U.S. District ...

By Sarah Johnson • March 18, 2008

Mystery Swirls over Missing CFO of Clinton-Library Firm

The chief financial officer of the company that built the Clinton Library has been missing since late January. And as the investigation continues, questions deepen about whether business pressures might have played a role in his disappearance. Police say John Glasgow, the CFO of Little Rock-based...

By Stephen Taub and Kate Plourd • March 17, 2008

Office Pools: A Safe Bet?

Cinderella teams are hard to resist. So regardless of your alma mater, you may be tempted to pick the feisty Drake University Bulldogs for your office pool in the NCAA basketball tournament. Water-cooler chatter at offices around the country is already buzzing about the David-versus-Goliath match...

By Marie Leone • March 14, 2008

Proposed Restatement Guidelines Draw Investor Alarm

Investor advocates are wary of a regulatory proposal that could decrease the number of times companies restate their financial results.Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, contends that the suggested changes to the Securities and Exchange Commissi...

By Sarah Johnson • March 14, 2008

Fund Time for Ex-Enron Workers

The Department of Labor has squeezed an extra $2 million out of Hewitt Associates, which it had accused of misallocating court-supervised settlement funds owed to former Enron employees.Hewitt, which was the fund’s administrator, and the Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. agreed to restore $11.2 mill...

By Stephen Taub • March 14, 2008

Pension Fund Pays for Alleged Insider Trading

An Alabama pension fund has agreed to pay $750,000 to former Liberty Corp. shareholders as a result of a federal insider trading probe, the Associated Press reported, citing pension officials.According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Retirement Systems of Alabama (RSA) purchased s...

By Stephen Taub • March 13, 2008

Holders Allege “Grand Theft” at Take-Two

Shareholders have sued Take-Two Interactive Software in Delaware Chancery Court for the company’s rejection of a takeover offer in which Electronic Arts Inc. offered a 64-percent premium, according to press reports.The suit claims that Take-Two, maker of the hit video game Grand Theft Auto, rebuf...

By Stephen Taub • March 11, 2008

A Shocking Day for Spitzer

Reports in the New York Times linking New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a federal prostitution investigation have undoubtedly stunned companies around the nation that had come to see Spitzer as a corporate crime-buster.The governor, the one-time scourge of Wall Street abuses, made a brief statement ...

By Roy Harris • March 10, 2008

Short on the Charm at Charming Shoppes

Charming Shoppes Inc. is suing two hedge funds that have launched a proxy fight against the company, alleging they have filed “materially misleading and incomplete documents” with the Securities and Exchange Commission.On Friday, the retailer that owns the Lane Bryant and Fashion Bug brands filed...

By Stephen Taub • March 10, 2008

SEC: Ready to Pounce on Pension Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission has fired a shot across the bow of public pension funds, warning the entities that poor compliance policies could sink them. On Thursday the SEC issued a report on an insider-trading investigation at Alabama’s state pension fund that highlighted the fund’s p...

By Kate Plourd • March 7, 2008

Quest Software, Two ex-CFOs Get Wells Notices

Quest Software said two of its former chief financial officers are among four individuals who may be charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the regulator’s probe into the backdating of stock options.The company itself also may face charges, according to a regulatory ...

By Stephen Taub • March 6, 2008

Man Bites SEC

A former executive with Aeropostale Inc. has sued the Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming it violated his confidential relationship with his attorney to obtain key information while investigating why he was fired. Christopher Finazzo, the former chief merchandising officer of the clothin...

By Stephen Taub • March 6, 2008

Ignore a Whistleblower — at Your Peril

A financial scandal at biotech company Dyadic International offers a telling lesson about how whistleblower memos can come back to haunt the executives who ignore them. Dyadic’s internal dirty laundry first came to light at the company last April, when then-CFO Wayne Moor went to the company’s As...

By Sarah Johnson • March 5, 2008

Investors Push Firm for Credit-Risk Data

The ongoing credit crunch and subprime-mortgage saga has heightened investors’ demand for knowing how much risk exposure their companies face. In response to investors’ questions about Principal Financial Group’s ties to bond insurers and mortgage companies, the 401(k) services and insurance prov...

By Sarah Johnson • March 5, 2008

Ex-Telecom CFO Settles with SEC

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission signed by Richard Fresia, former CFO of Expanets Inc., did not contain any accounting fraud charges. In a previous version of this article, and its headline, it was incorrectly s...

By Stephen Taub • March 5, 2008

Are Investors Smarter than We Think?

Restatements — the dreaded “R” word describing needed reworking of financial statements, often accompanied by excruciatingly late nights for internal accounting teams — may well bring to mind another shudder-worthy “R” term: regulation. It’s little wonder why, when numerous studies have recorded ...

By Sarah Johnson • March 4, 2008

A New Record for Enron? Highest Legal Fees

Here is another reminder why people go to law school. San Diego-based law firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP has requested $688 million in attorneys’ fees for representing Enron Corp. shareholders and investors, according to the Associated Press. The plaintiffs stand to recover m...

By Stephen Taub • March 3, 2008

Rigas Father and Son Lose Final Appeal

It looks like Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas will most likely die in prison after all.The Supreme Court denied the appeal of the 83-year-old Rigas and his son, Timothy — their last legal step toward overturning their fraud convictions for their roles in the collapse of the one-time ca...

By Stephen Taub • March 3, 2008

The Spill-Over Effect

Collecchio is a classic company town. Not far from Parma, in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, its modest streets and squares sprout from a large dairy factory on its western outskirts. In 2003, on Christmas Eve, this unlikely village gained international fame when Parmalat, the factory’s multinatio...

By Jason Karaian • March 3, 2008

No Cakewalk

Still reeling from its failure to spot the subprime-mortgage crisis, Standard & Poor’s is nonetheless moving ahead on a long-discussed plan to dissect enterprise risk management (ERM) practices at non-financial companies. But will S&P be able to gain enough visibility to assess something ...

By Vincent Ryan • March 1, 2008

Pulp Faction

Despite last year’s long-anticipated green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission that allows companies to issue online E-proxy statements in lieu of traditional paper copies, many companies continue to keep the presses rolling.In a recent survey of 482 companies conducted by the Natio...

By Kate Plourd • March 1, 2008

Court to Hear New Tyco Appeals

New York State’s top court has agreed to hear new appeals by former Tyco International executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, Reuters reports, citing a court official.A new court date has not yet been set, according to the wire service. Kozlowski and Swartz are serving long prison terms for...

By Stephen Taub • Feb. 29, 2008