Closing the Book on Adelphia Trials

Michael Rigas, a son of Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John Rigas, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of making a false entry in a financial record, reported the Associated Press. As a result, the company’s former executive vice president for operations will not be retried on charges of ...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 23, 2005

Hollinger Arraignments Postponed

Conrad Black was a no-show at his scheduled arraignment on fraud charges in a Chicago courtroom on Tuesday, according to published reports.His arraignment, as well as those of co-defendants John Boultbee, a former chief financial officer, and Peter Atkinson, former general counsel, also were post...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 22, 2005

Explore the Trendline➔

Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

Georgia-Pacific CEO to Receive $130M

When Koch Industries completes its purchase of Georgia-Pacific Corp., it will mark a big payday for A.D. “Pete” Correll, the outgoing chairman and chief executive officer of the target company. Correll stands to receive a package of stock-based compensation and other goodies worth a total of abou...

By Stephen Taub • Nov. 21, 2005

AIG Board Elects Former SEC Accountant

American International Group Inc. has elected a former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission to a key board committee and announced several corporate-governance changes.Michael H. Sutton, who served as chief accountant of the commission from 1995 until his retirement in 1998,...

By Stephen Taub • Oct. 21, 2005

Judge Orders Scrushy, SEC to Mediate

U.S. District Judge Inge Johnson has ordered mediation for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit against HealthSouth Corp.’s co-founder, former chairman, and former chief executive officer, Richard Scrushy.The SEC’s civil case was put on hold in November 2003, when federal prosecutors ...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 20, 2005

S&P Stops Issuing Governance Scores

In a marked turnaround from post-Enron days when strong corporate governance became a key selling point to investors, Standard & Poor’s Governance Services said it would no longer provide public corporate governance scores for U.S. companies, and withdrew its corporate governance score (CGS) ...

By Stephen Taub • Sept. 9, 2005

Board Recruitment More of a Challenge

Two recent surveys have found that directors are getting harder to recruit and more expensive to pay.The median compensation for directors who sit on corporate boards at 350 of the largest public U.S. companies rose to $155,000 in 2004, according to an annual survey by Mercer Human Resource Consu...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 2, 2005

Insider Stock Sales Eyed at Molson Coors

The board of directors of Molson Coors Brewing Co. has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the actions of current and former executives regarding the merger of Adolph Coors Co. and Molson Inc.According to the Rocky Mountain News, the board is focusing on transactions by chief executive off...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 2, 2005

Shell Settles Suits for $9.2 Million

Royal Dutch/Shell Plc. has agreed to pay $9.2 million and make corporate governance reforms to settle four shareholder lawsuits that stemmed from the company’s oil-reserves scandal, according to news reports.The settlement resolves lawsuits that were pending in U.S. federal courts in New York and...

By Craig Schneider • Sept. 1, 2005

Verizon Rebuffs MCI Governance Rules

Verizon Communications Inc. has reportedly set forth a closing condition for its $8.5 billion acquisition of MCI Corp.: The combined company shouldn’t be required abide by the corporate governance principles that MCI adopted when it emerged from bankruptcy.According to the Financial Times, adopti...

By Craig Schneider • Aug. 26, 2005

Fiduciary Duty in the Zone of Insolvency

During the past few years, the corporate-governance spotlight has been shining brightly on larger public companies. However, one lesson of a recent court case, Pereira v. Cogan, might be that because private companies are subject to a lower level of regulatory scrutiny than their public counterpa...

By Helen Shaw • Aug. 25, 2005

Disney Adopts Majority Voting

The Walt Disney Co. has become the latest major company to require that directors receive a majority of the votes cast in order to secure their seats.Though that might seem self-evident, most U.S. corporations use a plurality model, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center. Under ...

By Dave Cook and Stephen Taub • Aug. 19, 2005

Hollinger, Two Executives Indicted

Federal prosecutors have charged two former executives of U.S.-based newspaper holding company Hollinger International Inc. and a privately held Canadian company with fraudulently diverting more than $32 million through a complex series of self-dealing transactions.A seven-count indictment charge...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 18, 2005

For Banks, Better-run Means Better-rated

Experts may still be debating whether good corporate governance results in higher stock prices. At least for banks, however, governance practices clearly have a big impact on credit ratings and outlooks, according a review of 27 major U.S. financial institutions by Moody’s Investors Service.That ...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 17, 2005

Disney Wins Shareholder Lawsuit

Score one for boards of directors.Walt Disney directors were vindicated Tuesday when a Delaware judge ruled they did not violate their responsibilities to shareholders when they approved chief executive officer Michael Eisner’s decisions to hire and fire former president Michael Ovitz. The dismis...

By Stephen Taub • Aug. 10, 2005

Boards Eye Mandatory Retirement

Computer-equipment supplier Cisco Systems Inc. has announced that individuals age 70 or older will no longer be eligible for nomination or renomination to the company’s board of directors. “This provides both the board and our shareholders with a clear roadmap for the natural evolution of our boa...

By Stephen Taub • July 22, 2005

Merrill Taps SEC Enforcement Attorney

Merrill Lynch & Co. is the latest company to call on a big name from the Securities and Exchange Commission to help bolster its credibility. The investment bank named David L. Kornblau, chief litigation counsel of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, as its head of regulatory affairs, effective...

By Stephen Taub • July 7, 2005

AIG Names Levitt as Advisor

American International Group Inc. has named Arthur Levitt, who served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001, as a special advisor to AIG’s board of directors and its nominating and corporate governance committee.His duties will include advising the committee on p...

By Stephen Taub • July 6, 2005

Nonprofits by the Numbers

The whole affair shocked Stephen Howell, CFO of The Nature Conservancy, the largest philanthropic environmental group in the world. In May 2003, a three-part series in the Washington Post put the Conservancy’s operations under a spotlight. While the newspaper didn’t much dispute the charity’s GAA...

By Bill Birchard • July 1, 2005

Scrushy Battles to Stay on the Board

One day after his stunning acquittal on charges that he directed a $2.7 billion accounting fraud, former HealthSouth Corp. chief executive officer Richard Scrushy has vowed to fight efforts to boot him from the company’s board of directors.“He intends to continue as a director of HealthSouth,” Sc...

By Stephen Taub • June 29, 2005

Pfizer to Install Some Majority Voting

Becoming just one of a handful of companies to voluntarily give shareholders more say in the director-nomination process, Pfizer Inc. will adopt a form of majority voting.The drugmaker amended its corporate-governance principles to require that any director who gets a majority of withheld votes m...

By Stephen Taub • June 27, 2005

Shareholder Proposals Still Making Waves

Nearly 23 percent of shareholder proposals have received majority votes this year, according to the Investor Responsibility Research Center. However, that initial tally is on pace to fall slightly short of last year’s success rate, when 134 proposals out of 447 (about 30 percent) got majority sup...

By Stephen Taub • June 20, 2005

Kozlowski and Swartz Convicted

Former Tyco International Ltd. chairman and chief executive officer Dennis Kozlowski, 58, and former chief financial officer Mark Swartz, 44, were found guilty of grand larceny, securities fraud, conspiracy, and falsifying business records in their criminal trial in New York state court in Manhat...

By Dave Cook and Helen Shaw • June 17, 2005

AFC Settles, Makes Governance Changes

AFC Enterprises Inc. has closed the books on its accounting problems.The company — known its for Popeyes, Chicken & Biscuits, Church’s Chicken, and Cinnabon franchises — announced that it has settled the final derivative lawsuits relating to the company’s restatement for fiscal years 2000, 20...

By Stephen Taub • June 15, 2005

Greenberg Resigns from AIG Board

Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg resigned from the board of directors of American International Group Inc., finally severing all ties to the company he led for nearly four decades and turned into one of the world’s most dominant insurance companies, according to published reports.“My decision to resig...

By Stephen Taub • June 9, 2005