PCAOB Points to Audit Progress

pcaob

The head of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board launched a charm offensive this week, praising audit firms for falling rates of deficient audits and stressing that the PCAOB plays an important role in investor protection. I’m sure Republicans’ anti-PCAOB mood these days was just a coincidence. Erica Williams, chair of the PCAOB, spoke Wednesday…

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Compliance Program Priorities That Endure

compliance

’Tis the season for speeches from Justice Department officials, as they reflect on the year’s enforcement activity — and these days, try to establish some sense of continuity even as the incoming Trump Administration portends a very different approach to corporate compliance and regulatory enforcement. Which brings us to a Justice Department speech delivered late…

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Questions for Incoming SEC Chairman

enforcement

Last week President-elect Trump said he will nominate Paul Atkins to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now compliance and audit professionals can start considering how an Atkins-led SEC will shape corporate compliance for the next few years, and there are lots of questions to contemplate here.  Start with the biographical…

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Compliance Jobs Report: Dec. 6

compliance jobs

The Compliance Jobs Report this week has new hires at TD Bank, Western Union, Green Dot, BioNTech SE, Fidelity, and lots more. We have a bunch of promotions and workplace anniversaries to note too, and job leads are in consulting, higher ed, and drones. Meme of the Week goes out to Squid Games! Always remember…

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Double Blast of FCPA News

fcpa

Keep up, compliance officers! A subsidiary of global consulting giant McKinsey agreed today to pay $122.8 million to settle FCPA charges in South Africa; and the Justice Department says it might allow some companies currently under corporate integrity agreements to exit those agreements early.  Those are very different news stories, so we’ll take each one…

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FTC Strikes Again on AI Controls

AI

The Federal Trade Commission has dinged a California business for making misleading statements about the accuracy of facial-recognition technology that the company sells — yet another enforcement action over artificial intelligence that offers numerous lessons for corporate compliance and audit professionals. The company in question is IntelliVision Technologies, a subsidiary of Nice North America, which…

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Four Reasons to Watch the Adani Case

Adani

Sometimes a tale of corporate corruption comes along that perfectly captures all the issues that ethics and compliance professionals face in our line of work. Such is the case with the Adani Group, and compliance officers everywhere should watch it closely; it could be a hugely telling case for corruption enforcement in 2025.  By now…

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Compliance Jobs Report: Nov. 29

compliance jobs

What better way to spend Thanksgiving than by reading the Compliance Jobs Report? This week we have a departure at Johnson & Johnson, promotions at TD Bank and Lucid Motors, new hires at General Motors and Abu Dhabi Ports, and lots more. Job leads are in public utilities, manufacturing, and dentists; and don’t forget our…

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Two Insurers Nailed on Data Breaches

cybersecurity

Just in time for Thanksgiving, regulators in New York have served up a double helping of cybersecurity enforcement, against two large insurance firms that repeatedly failed to remediate known weaknesses in their IT systems that left customers’ personal data vulnerable to thieves. The New York attorney general and the Department of Financial Services announced their…

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Corporate Enforcement Policy Tweaked Again

Justice

The Justice Department is relaxing its approach to corporate criminal enforcement yet again, this time giving companies a bit more breathing room for what counts as “self-disclosure” and “significant profit” — all to further entice companies to step forward and admit legal violations, so that those violations can be resolved more quickly. Nicole Argentieri, deputy…

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