KPMG Spreads the Ethics Gospel

Ethics programming abounds in college and university accounting curriculums. And as normal with higher education, courses tend to be more theoretical than practical. Now, though, a set of tools is being made available to schools by a veritable laboratory of real-world accounting ethics dilemmas: ...

By David McCann • Nov. 29, 2007

Moody’s Frets over Fidelity’s Governance

FMR Corp.’s conversion in October from a corporation to a limited liability company has spurred Moody’s Investors Service to release a report describing its ongoing concerns about the investment company’s governance. The change doesn’t affect FMR’s credit rating, which continues to be Aa3, the ...

By Stephen Taub and David McCann • Nov. 8, 2007

Day of Reckoning for Ex-Freddie Chief

Former Freddie Mac CEO Leland Brendsel agreed to a $16.4 million settlement with the government stemming from the mortgage company’s accounting scandal four years ago. Brendsel will pay $2.5 million to the government and disgorge previously paid salary and bonuses of $10.5 million to Freddie Mac....

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 7, 2007

Ethical Foundations

Companies are not shy about promoting themselves to shareholders as ethical investments, but how ethical are they when it comes to investing their own cash?It was a question raised recently by UKSIF, a London network for sustainable and responsible financial-service providers, as it canvassed pen...

By Janet Kersnar • Nov. 5, 2007

Talk about a Revolution

Add management guru Gary Hamel’s name to the list of proselytisers for a radical change in management philosophy. “We’re prisoners of the industrial age management model,” he laments, in an interview with CFO Europe. “The idea that companies are run as hierarchies, that their people are not very ...

By Morice Mendoza • Nov. 5, 2007

Study: Audit Committees Rubber-Stamp Management

While audit committees have become much smarter and more active since passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, they are still feeling out their new authority. Even though they wield more influence than ever over the hiring and firing of auditors, for example, management continues to hold greate...

By Edward Teach • Oct. 24, 2007

How to Fight Fraud: Know Thyself

Facing down fraud within a company is inherently tricky. Insiders know a firm’s weak spots and blind spots, making them well placed to skim some extra earnings.Less than 10 percent of corporate embezzlements are reported, according to Frank Abagnale, whose life was portrayed in the hit film “Catc...

By Alan Rappeport • Oct. 11, 2007

Canada Pension Fund Buys Glass, Lewis

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan bought Glass, Lewis & Co., the prominent investment-research and proxy-services provider, from Xinhua Finance Ltd. of Shanghai for $46 million on Friday.The pension plan, which had $106 billion in net assets as of December 31, 2006, administers the pensions ...

By David Katz • Oct. 5, 2007

Just Look at Yourselves

It’s like having children mark their own homework, quip governance experts at ICSA International, a professional body for company secretaries, after recently studying a number of corporate board self-assessment programmes in the UK. They say many “in-house” programmes being run by companies are n...

By Eila Rana • Oct. 1, 2007

Buca Settles Book-Cooking Charges

The Securities and Exchange Commission settled an array of civil charges against Buca, Inc. relating to alleged improper dealings involving its former CEO and CFO. The Commission alleged that from 2000 through 2004, the parent of the Buca di Beppo restaurant chain materially understated the comp...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 1, 2007

Conduct Breach Forces CEO to Resign

The Children’s Place Retail Stores said that Ezra Dabah has resigned as Chief Executive Officer after a board committee investigation found that in two instances he did not comply with the company’s internal policies related to securities trades. The probe also found irregularities in the expense...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 27, 2007

Battling for the Boardroom

The debate over so-calledproxy access is intensifying asshareholder activists and pensionfunds push for the right to nominatedirectors even as businesslobbyists counter that grantingthat right could create boardsthat are beholden to special-interest groups.The tension was obvious during a July Se...

By Kate O'Sullivan • Sept. 26, 2007

Couple Plead Guilty in “Pillow-talk” Case

Jennifer Wang, a former Morgan Stanley finance department executive, and her husband, Rubin Chen, a former ING hedge fund executive, pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminal insider trading charges. The case was one of the first in a series of recent “pillow-talk” cases, in which married couples exch...

By Tim Reason • Sept. 6, 2007

Feds: Ex-Hospital CFO Stole $96K

The former CFO of a nonprofit California hospital was charged Monday with embezzling $96,000.Richard Lynn Wheat, the former CFO of Southern Monterey County Memorial Hospital (known as the George L. Mee Memorial Hospital), was charged by United States Attorney Scott N. Schools charged with one cou...

By Tim Reason and Stephen Taub • Aug. 28, 2007

Did PokerTek CFO Have a Wild Card?

PokerTek, Inc. said in a regulatory filing Friday that it had placed CFO Christopher Daniels on administrative leave after it became aware that Daniels may have inappropriately used the company’s corporate credit card for personal purchases. The company said it was made aware of the purchases dur...

By Stephen Taub and Tim Reason • Aug. 27, 2007

Home Depot Directors Take a Tiny Pay Cut

Home Depot Inc. — excoriated in 2006 for holding an annual meeting attended by just one director — has eliminated the $2,000 per-meeting fee that board members would have received had they been there.In an Aug. 20 8-K filing, the home-improvement company disclosed several minor changes in directo...

By Roy Harris • Aug. 21, 2007

4Kids Entertainment Adopts a Pill

4Kids Entertainment Inc. directors adopted a shareholder rights plan and other measures to guard against unwanted takeover attempts.As often happens when such plans are adopted, making an acquisition less likely, the share price of 4Kids fell. The 2.9-percent decline lowered the quote to $14.60, ...

By Roy Harris • Aug. 16, 2007

A Toxic Mess

It was a rare example of large companies banding togetherwith environmental groups — not to mention landowners and thestates — against the federal government. Last month the U.S.Supreme Court ruled in the groups’ favor in United States v.Atlantic Research Corp., a case that could have a major imp...

By Laura DeMars • July 27, 2007

Do Companies Do Good Well?

Large global companies are doing a fine job of serving the public good —according to executives at those companies, anyway. Consumers are much lessimpressed, and likely to express their displeasure by avoiding the products and servicesof companies they feel come up short.McKinsey & Co. survey...

By Scott Leibs • July 24, 2007

The Majority Doesn’t Rule

In a corporate action that could have wide ramifications, diagnostic test provider Gen-Probe Inc. refused to accept the resignation of a board member who failed to receive majority support from shareholders at the May 31 annual meeting. Dr. Mae C. Jemison had insufficient votes for reelection as ...

By Stephen Taub • July 20, 2007

Ten Things We Hate about Fraud

Corporate fraud schemes may have been on the decline in the past few years, but they remain a tenacious type of crime, according to a new report by the Deloitte Forensic Center.The study analyzes 344 Securities and Exchange Commission “accounting and auditing enforcement releases,” or AAERs, dea...

By Alan Rappeport • July 20, 2007

Embezzling CFO Gets Eight Years in Jail

The former CFO and another former executive at an engineering consulting firm were sentenced Wednesday in connection with their role in a $36-million embezzlement.W. Scott DeLoach, the former finance exec of PBS&J, an employee-owned national engineering and construction, was sentenced to 97 m...

By Stephen Taub • July 18, 2007

A Whodunnit in the Hamptons

Elvis surely didn’t do it. But a self-serving butler will pay to make insider-trading charges go away. Graham J. Lefford, a former butler to American Idol creator Robert Sillerman, has agreed to a $66,200 settlement in an insider-trading case. The Securities and Exchange Commission had charged Le...

By Alan Rappeport • July 10, 2007

Beazer Fires Top Accountant

Beazer Homes USA said it fired Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Michael T. Rand for violating the company’s ethics policy. The homebuilder added that the finance executive tried to destroy documents in violation of the company’s document retention policy, according to a company ...

By Stephen Taub • June 28, 2007

Smithsonian: No Corporate Types, Please

The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian, the august institution charged with safeguarding the cultural treasures of the United States, announced sweeping governance changes Monday “based on nonprofit sector best practices.” Among those best practices: prohibiting its staff members, which apparent...

By Stephen Taub • June 19, 2007