Posts by Matt Kelly
Study: California Privacy Compliance a Mess
A new research report says the vast majority of companies are not prepared to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act, with nearly 90 percent of businesses either fumbling along with manual processes or just not in compliance at all. So says Cytrio, a privacy compliance software vendor that published the report on Wednesday, after…
Read MoreA Major Shift in Antitrust Policy
Well this is fortunate timing: one day after we had a post exploring the antitrust challenges around Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the Justice Department’s top antitrust official gave a speech warning that his division will be more likely to block proposed mergers and less likely to accept settlements that simply restrict post-merger practices. …
Read MoreMicrosoft, Activision and Antitrust Issues
OK, Microsoft has proposed acquiring Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Now comes the parlor game of analyzing the ethics and compliance issues involved in this mammoth deal, and two arise right away: surviving regulatory scrutiny, and repairing Activision’s defective corporate culture. We can begin with the regulatory scrutiny, because this deal captures so many current…
Read MoreCompliance Jobs Report: Jan. 21
The Compliance Jobs Report this week has new hires at Zoominfo, Google, RxDefine, Splunk, and elsewhere. We also have a bundle of personnel news from the financial services world, a notable ex-CCO moving into consulting world, and job leads in software, aviation gear, and Wisconsin. Plus our Meme of the Week! As always, thank you…
Read MoreCFPB Offers Clues on Diversity Programs
Ethics and compliance professionals looking for guidance about how to develop diversity efforts might want to visit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB just published a report reviewing diversity efforts at financial firms and how the agency will assess those efforts in the future. Financial regulators are obligated to assess the diversity policies and…
Read MoreStudy: SEC Tweeting Cuts Misconduct
Let it never be said that arcane bits of academic research have no relevance to corporate compliance! A grad student at Yale has found that regional SEC offices’ robust use of Twitter correlates to reduced insider trading, customer complaints against investment advisers, and financial misreporting. I came across this study last week — on Twitter,…
Read MoreMore on the Challenges of Listen-Up Culture
Today we have a disturbing lesson on ethics and compliance from New Hampshire, where police are frantically searching for a seven-year-old girl who apparently has been missing since 2019 — because nobody took the girl’s drug-addled mother seriously while she tried to raise alarms about her daughter for months. The girl is Harmony Montgomery. She…
Read MoreCompliance Jobs Report: Jan. 14
Another big week for compliance jobs! News from Georgia Tech, Truist, Facebook, Warner Music, Las Vegas Sands, and many more. We also have some compliance officers moving into the consulting world; job leads in transportation, auto parts, and city government; and our Meme of the Week goes out to internal investigators. As always, thank you…
Read MoreCarnival, Princess Cruises Busted Again
Here we go again: Princess Cruise Lines has pleaded guilty to a second violation of a probation deal imposed by the Justice Department in 2017 for environmental crimes, will pay another $1 million in criminal penalties, and undertake even more remedial measures to strengthen its compliance program. If all this sounds familiar, that’s because Princess…
Read MoreAnother Interesting Sanctions Case
Another week, another interesting sanctions enforcement action from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. This time we have a Hong Kong trading company fined $5.2 million for facilitating trade with a chemicals business in Iran — but also catching a break because the company had warned its employees repeatedly to steer clear of Iranian customers.…
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