Houston, We Have a Trial

The trial of former Enron Corp. executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling will stay put, in Houston, after U.S. District Judge Sim Lake denied a defense motion for a change of venue, according to the Houston Chronicle.Skilling faces 35 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, and lying to ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 24, 2006

Court Rules in Wal-Mart Unionizing Case

A U.S. appeals court has ruled that a district court can decide a lawsuit brought by Wal-Mart workers charging that the company unfairly threatened to deny benefits to employees who unionize, according to the Associated Press.Central to the case is a “union exclusion clause” that Wal-Mart had in ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 20, 2006

Proxy Battles Heating Up

The 2006 proxy season opened with a bang. On January 10, a group of General Electric Co. investors claimed victory and withdrew a shareholder resolution that they had doggedly pursued for at least five years.The shareholders, a group of 26 religious organizations called the Tri-State Coalition fo...

By Marie Leone • Jan. 19, 2006

Whistle-blower Shield Stops at Border

The whistle-blower protections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act do not extend to foreign workers employed by the overseas subsidiaries of U.S. companies, according to a court ruling reported by The National Law Journal.“If the whistle-blower protection provision is given extraterritorial reach in a case...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 18, 2006

Supreme Court Rules for Wachovia

Wachovia Corp. and other national banks chalked up a critical victory Tuesday when the Supreme Court ruled that lawsuits against them may be heard in federal courts rather than in multiple state courts, according to Dow Jones.The ruling essentially found that national banks are corporate citizens...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 17, 2006

SEC Proposes Changes to Pay Disclosure

As widely expected, on Tuesday the Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously voted to require sweeping changes to the disclosure of executive compensation.The proposals now go through a 60-day comment period, which is expected to generate a tremendous number of responses, followed by possibl...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 17, 2006

Finance Combines Opportunity with Necessity

After marching through the first phases of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, senior finance executives are turning their attention to making their regulatory compliance both more sustainable and also a driver of better business performance, according to a May 2005 survey of readers of CFO m...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Jan. 17, 2006

SEC Upgrades IBM Disclosure Probe

The Securities and Exchange Commission has raised the status of its probe of IBM’s earnings disclosures from an informal investigation to a formal one, according to the company.In an 8-K filing, Big Blue stated that the commission is looking into the company’s disclosures of its first-quarter 200...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 13, 2006

Tenet to Settle Medicare-related Suits

Tenet Healthcare Corp. has agreed to pay $215 million to settle two lawsuits accusing the company of fraud. The cases alleged that Tenet and a number of former officers and directors made or were responsible for false and misleading statements concerning Medicare payments and other issues.The agr...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 12, 2006

Beller to Leave SEC

Alan Beller, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s director of the Division of Corporation Finance and one of the SEC’s most influential individuals outside of the five commissioners, is returning to the private sector.Under the leadership of Beller, the corporate finance division “produced th...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 11, 2006

Keep It Simple, Prosecutor

Who benefits more from a long, involved jury trial on the complexities of corporate accounting, the prosecution or the defense?Mindful of the results of the results at the trials of Richard Scrushy (acquitted) and Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz (first a contentious mistrial, then convictions), ...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 11, 2006

Dutch Funds Sue Shell in U.S. Court

In the 1620s, Dutch settlers erected trading posts in and around Newark, New Jersey, to stake a business claim in the New World. Last week, still with an eye toward trading issues, Netherlanders landed in Newark once again. Only this time, they took their concerns to the U.S. District Court of Ne...

By Marie Leone • Jan. 11, 2006

Enron Audiotape Prompts Second Thoughts

Mark Koenig, the former head of investor relations for Enron Corp., now maintains that a false statement he admitted to making was actually made by former chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling, according to the Houston Chronicle.In August 2004, Koenig pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting secu...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 10, 2006

Ex-Dynegy Finance Pair Get Prison Terms

Two former members of Dynegy Inc.’s finance team received prison sentences stemming from their roles in the energy company’s accounting scandal.Gene Foster, the former vice president of tax, got 15 months behind bars, three years of probation, and a $1,000 fine, according to The Houston Chronicle...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 6, 2006

SEC Clarifies Policy on Fines

The Securities and Exchange Commission has clarified what many critics have said is a capricious and controversial policy for fining companies as part of a disciplinary action or settlement. The commission also announced settlements with two companies, McAfee Inc. and Applix Inc., only one of whi...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 5, 2006

Feds Say Skilling Tried to ‘Deceive’ SEC

Federal prosecutors have alleged that former Enron Corp. president Jeffrey Skilling attempted to “deceive” the Securities and Exchange Commission in a December 2001 deposition, according to The Wall Street Journal.Skilling’s sale of 500,000 Enron shares, on September 17 of that year, came less th...

By Stephen Taub • Jan. 4, 2006

Business Travel Goes Private

With commercial airlines flying into bankruptcy more frequently than flights arrive at O’Hare International, business travelers are increasingly looking for alternatives — in particular, jet-card programs and charter companies.Six-year-old Weymouth, Mass.-based Sentient Jet Inc. is proof. The com...

By Laura DeMars • Jan. 1, 2006

Park-n-Load

Legally speaking, companies have every right to prohibit employees from bringing guns to the workplace. Prohibiting them from bringing guns to the parking lot of the workplace…well, that appears to be another matter entirely.In fact, lawmakers in several states are considering bills that would ba...

By Karen M. Kroll • Jan. 1, 2006

Divided Loyalties

Brace yourself for a shock: your company’s real estate broker may not always have your best interests at heart.True, this is probably about as stunning as, say, the revelation that securities analysts once wrote flattering things about banking clients. But, like the complex relationships of the p...

By Don Durfee • Dec. 29, 2005

Enron’s Causey Pleads Guilty

Former Enron Corp. chief accounting officer Richard Causey agreed to plead guilty to securities fraud during a re-arraignment hearing on Wednesday afternoon, according to published reports.Causey faced 36 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading, lying to auditors, and money laundering for he...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 28, 2005

New Math, New Sentence for Dynegy’s Olis

Federal prosecutors are recommending a 15-year prison sentence for Jamie Olis — once a midlevel executive at Houston-based energy company Dynegy Inc. — for his role in the company’s accounting scandal, reported the Houston Chronicle.Olis and his co-conspirators — his former boss, Gene Shannon Fos...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 21, 2005

Merck Wins Stock-drop Appeal

A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Merck & Co. Inc. even though the drugmaker had been “treading a fine line” in its disclosures, reported The Legal Intelligencer.In June 2001, Merck’s share price fell after The Wall Street Journal reported that its subsidi...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 20, 2005

Who Should Lead Compliance?

U.S. companies have had to comply with international trade, federal, and state regulatory requirements for generations. But the combination of new regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and closer scrutiny from investors and boards of directors have made complying with regulation a mo...

By 10Rule • Dec. 20, 2005

SEC Drops Case Against TenFold Execs

The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped all charges against the former CEO of software development company TenFold Corp. as well as three former finance executives, according to a press release fired off by Morrison & Foerster, the law firm representing the former chief executive.I...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 19, 2005

SEC Adopts New Filing Deadlines

The Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted new deadlines for filing quarterly and annual reports, depending upon the size of the company.In phasing in the final stage of its accelerated filing deadlines, the SEC created a new category called “large accelerated filers,” which includes comp...

By Stephen Taub • Dec. 15, 2005