A Trade Secret Comes to Light, Again

Three years ago, Skyworks Solutions Inc. was in a quandary. Sales of its semiconductors were soaring and the company was eager to increase capacity and boost research and development. To finance the expansion, Skyworks wanted to tap a key asset — $60 million in receivables — to use as collateral ...

By Marie Leone • Nov. 1, 2005

When Lightning Strikes

Companies’ contingency planning used to consist of little more than duplicating IT facilities in case their systems went down or the hardware in their basement was flooded. Today, however, firms are aware that they need to think about many more potential disruptions. Hardly a week goes by without...

By Economist Staff • Oct. 28, 2005

Study Hits InstitutionaI Investor Suits

A U.S. Chamber of Commerce study asserts that the outcomes of class-action lawsuits are stacked in favor of large institutions.“The average American investor gets the short end of the stick in the securities class-action system as compared to large institutional investors,” says Lisa Rickard, pre...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 27, 2005

WorldCom Investors Get $651 Million

A total of 67 institutional investors recovered more than $651 million from a group of banks and other defendants to compensate the investors for losses on purchases of WorldCom bonds and stock from 1998 through 2001, according to Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, the law fir...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 27, 2005

Who’s Holding the Bag?

Seven years ago this month, bankers across Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief. Two rate cuts in two weeks by the Federal Reserve had finally stanched the bleeding at Long-Term Capital Management — but not before the Fed cajoled some 14 banks into buying pieces of the collapsing hedge fund to s...

By Tim Reason • Oct. 27, 2005

New Guidance on Small-business Controls

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) has released for public comment the exposure draft of its much-anticipated Guidance for Smaller Public Companies Reporting on Internal Control over Financial Reporting.The 189-page draft outlines 26 fundamental principles...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 26, 2005

‘What’s a Sarbox? Say Many Shareholders

More than three years after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, investors are apparently not too confident that the new governance rules are reining in inappropriate behavior by corporate executives.According to a new poll conducted by The Wall Street Journaland Harris Interactive, 55 percent ...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

Southwest Hedging Fuels Q3 Results

Who said surging fuel prices destroy profits? Certainly not the folks at Southwest Airlines Co.Southwest announced that third-quarter net income jumped about 91 percent, to $227 million. This is a far cry from the story at most other airlines, which are either in bankruptcy or trying to avoid it....

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

GAO Eyes Settlement Write-offs

The Internal Revenue Service and agencies that reach civil settlements with businesses should work more closely to ensure that companies give the proper tax treatment to their payouts, maintains a report from the Government Accountability Office.Earlier this year, for example, Marsh & McLenna...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 20, 2005

When Risk Meets Reality

At its simplest, banking comes down to this: borrow short, lend long, and pocket the spread. But ever since the banking crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, bankers have sought more sophisticated ways of making money. As some learned to their sorrow, being so tightly linked to interest rates...

By Ronald Fink • Oct. 18, 2005

Automation and Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance

Most companies are anxious for business unit managers to assume accountability for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Yet, they also realize that the biggest pain points in the compliance process — and the biggest opportunities for achieving savings and greater efficiency — lie not in the scramble for be...

By Eric Laursen • Oct. 18, 2005

Samsung Fined $300 Million for Price Fix

Samsung Electronics Co., the big Korean maker of computer memory chips, and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., have agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $300 million fine — the second biggest in a criminal antitrust case in U.S. history — for fixing prices, according to the Departmen...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 14, 2005

Securities Groups at Odds with AICPA

In a scathing letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bond Market Association and the Securities Industry Association took issue with what they called “anti-investor positions” taken by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.The two securities groups object to an AIC...

By Lisa Yoon • Oct. 13, 2005

Sarbox ABCs for the Rank and File

Aquila, Inc., an electric utilities company, is so serious about complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Act internal-controls rules that it’s requiring all employees — from line workers to the chief executive officer — to complete an online ethics training program.Indeed, the problems featured in the prog...

By Helen Shaw • Oct. 13, 2005

SEC Names Chief Litigation Counsel

The Securities and Exchange Commission named Luis Mejia as its new chief litigation counsel on Wednesday. He succeeds David Kornblau, who departed in August.Mejia, who will lead the enforcement division’s trial attorneys, is “an exceptionally talented trial lawyer and a superb legal tactician,” s...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 12, 2005

Prosecutors Challenge Legal Defense Fees

An unprecedented legal maneuver by federal prosecutors may threaten the legal fees that corporate executives rely on from their employers, according to The National Law Journal.The maneuver surfaced during the retrial of two former executives of Westar Energy Inc., chairman and chief executive of...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 12, 2005

Lawyers for Less

Companies all want law firms to turn over every stone in the quest to win their cases. Paying for all that stone-turning is another matter.In the past, the desire for a favorable outcome has usually won out over cost concerns. These days, though, many companies are finding a way to shave expenses...

By Russ Banham • Oct. 12, 2005

Sarbox: Year 2

First, the good news: Most companies have endured and survived their initial foray into Sarbanes-Oxley. And while it often proved a costly and occasionally frenzied experience, it has, many companies say, improved the controls that govern corporate operations. On the other side of the ledger, unf...

By Bob Violino • Oct. 12, 2005

Exxon Mobil Settles Pollution Case

Exxon Mobil Corp. will settle a case with the Department of Justice by spending $571 million to install pollution-reduction equipment on seven U.S. refineries, according to press reports. A civil penalty will cost the oil giant $8.7 million, while Exxon Mobil will pay another $9.7 million toward ...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 11, 2005

Latest Microsoft Antitrust Deal: $761M

Microsoft Inc. announced that it will pay RealNetworks Inc. $761 million to settle its last major antitrust case and to build an alliance for digital media and games.A first payment of $460 million in cash will resolve all RealNetworks claims and enable the company — until now a fierce critic of ...

By Craig Schneider • Oct. 11, 2005

GE Agrees to Dredge Hudson River

Decades after it was barred from discharging large quantities of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into New York State’s Hudson River, The General Electric Co. has agreed to dredge at least some of the toxic substances from the waterway.The New York Times called the project “one of the largest and...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2005

From Inside Counsel to Offshore Counsel?

Cost-cutters who appreciated CFO magazine’s October article “Lawyers for Less” might also take note of a related but largely unnoticed trend. In 2003, about 6,000 legal-service jobs were shipped offshore, according to a report by Forrester Research. This year that number should reach 20,000 accor...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 7, 2005

Ex-KPMG Partner Settles on Xerox Charges

A former KPMG partner has agreed to pay $100,000 as part of a settlement of Securities and Exchange Commission charges stemming from his audit of Xerox Corp., which had been accused of improper accounting practices. Joseph T. Boyle, the copier maker’s relationship partner on audits from 1999 thro...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 7, 2005

Hey! Look at Me!

Sometimes Mike Shea feels like a forgotten man. As CFO of Mac-Gray Corp., an operator of laundry facilities, he enjoyed the coverage of three sell-side research analysts in 1997 when the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Today, no one on the sell-side follows the Cambridge, Mass...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Oct. 6, 2005

Katrina Is Costliest U.S. Catastrophe

The damaged caused by Hurricane Katrina in late August will cost U.S. property and casualty insurers an estimated $34.4 billion, says a new report released by Insurance Services Office Inc.According to officials from ISO, which provides data to the risk management industry, that preliminary estim...

By Marie Leone • Oct. 5, 2005