Category: Governance

The New York Times: “Many on Wall Street Say It Remains Untamed”

2015-05-19 posted by

In the study, to be released Tuesday, about a third of the people who said they made more than $500,000 annually contend that they “have witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace.”

Just as bad: “Nearly one in five respondents feel financial service professionals must sometimes engage in unethical or illegal activity to be successful in the current financial environment.”

One in 10 said they had directly felt pressure “to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.”

Read More

BBC: “The Problem With Super Stars”

2015-05-19 posted by

Big personalities draw attention, ratings, and revenue. It doesn't matter whether it’s the world of entertainment, sport, fashion, or any other kind of business, charismatic personalities can be a real boon. But what happens if something goes wrong?

What happens if the person who has been so valuable to the company crosses an ethical line, behaves in a way that brings disrepute to the organisation, or acts in an inappropriate way? And what role does a company board play in such a situation?

Read More

Toshiba’ s Case is Similar to IHI’s in 2007

2015-05-16 posted by

In 2007 Ishikawa Harima Industries (IHI) experienced large profit overstatements (and subsequent downward revisions) caused by overly-optimistic estimates used in percentage-of-completion accounting for large projects. At the bottom of the link below, you can see IHI’s explanation of the incident, and the actions it took for years afterwards in order to improve its internal controls and accounting:

http://www.ihi.co.jp/csr/english/2011/management/governance.html

Read More

PwC’s 2014 Annual Corporate Directors Survey – The Gender Edition

2015-05-16 posted by

The global discussion about gender diversity on public company boards continues. Despite practices in several countries like the adoption of quotas, and significant efforts undertaken by a number of organizations in the US to increase gender diversity of directors, the number of women serving as directors has not changed significantly over the last six years. (18% of all S&P 500 directors are now female compared to 16% in 20081.

Read More

The Economist: “The Anti-Bribery Business”

2015-05-13 posted by

Even for a company with Wal-mart’s heft, $800 million is a sizable sum. That is what the giant retailer will have spent by the end of this fiscal year on its internal probe into alleged bribing of Mexican officials, into whether subsidiaries elsewhere may have been greasing palms and on related compliance improvements.

Read More