Posts by Matt Kelly
SEC Charges Retailer on Impairment Issue
You don’t see this too often: the Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a fashion retailer with failing to impair goodwill in a timely manner, citing weak internal controls over how management determined goodwill and an attempt to mislead the company’s auditors. The company in question is Squential Brands, which sells clothing brands such as…
Read MoreCompliance Jobs Report: Dec. 11
The Compliance Jobs Report this week is another big one. Hitachi has named its first-ever CCO, and we also have new hires at Farmer Mac, Kaleo, Barclays, Softline, and elsewhere. Promotions at Walmart, Aker Energy, and Nissan. We have three job openings of note, plus our compliance Meme of the Week. As always, thank you…
Read MoreLeadership Failures at Fort Hood
Compliance officers have another case-study in flawed corporate culture and problematic leadership to consider. This one comes from the U.S. Army, in a blistering report on senior officers’ failure to prevent sexual assault at the Fort Hood military base. The Army fired or suspended 14 senior officers Tuesday for their leadership failures at Fort Hood,…
Read MoreAML Reform and Whistleblowers
I try to be as cynical as possible about Congress, but this week may be one of those rare times when lawmakers actually do something intelligent. They’re poised to overhaul the nation’s anti-money laundering laws in a dramatic way, with a potentially huge gift to compliance officers to boot. That overhaul is the Anti-Money Laundering…
Read MoreCompliance Jobs Report: Dec. 4
The Compliance Jobs Report is back, and we have a lot to dig through from the holiday break! Compliance personnel on the move at Duke Energy, a new audit chief at GE, and more news from Pandora, Cox Enterprises, the VHA, and many more. We have three job openings in the Northeast to note, and…
Read MoreA Tale: Audit vs. Compliance
My phone rang the other day; it was the U.S. compliance officer at a large global business whom I know quite well. “Hey,” he said, “you know the statistic that more than half of internal audit people have felt pressure to cover up awkward findings in their work? I have a complaint about that.” I…
Read MorePCAOB Report on Pandemic Auditing
The PCAOB just published a mid-pandemic progress report on how audit firms are handling their work during coronavirus. Compliance and audit executives may want to give it a read for hints about how auditors are trying to inspect your internal controls and which risks are high priority. The report, Staff Observations and Reminders During the…
Read MoreZoom and FTC Enforcement to Come
A few weeks ago the Federal Trade Commission took an enforcement action against Zoom Technologies for misleading statements Zoom made about the security of its videoconferencing services. The case wasn’t too exciting except for a dissenting statement from one of the Democratic FTC commissioners — which read like a foreshadowing of cybersecurity enforcement in the…
Read MoreMore Misadventures in Leadership
Who knew, compliance officers, that we could spend Thanksgiving weekend musing over yet another example of tone-deaf leadership and the damage it can do to corporate culture? Yet we can do precisely that thanks to Michael Hancock, mayor of Denver. Those of you in Colorado may already know the story. Hancock, like every other sensible…
Read MoreApple Exec Indicted on Bribery Charge
A grand jury indicted one of Apple’s top compliance executives on Monday for offering 200 iPads to a local sheriff’s office in exchange for concealed weapons permits. Tom Moyer, currently Apple’s head of global security and chief compliance officer from 2009 to 2018, was indicted in Santa Clara County on one count of bribing an…
Read More