The head of privacy policy for Facebook changed his status this week, jumping to EY to advise companies on privacy issues. MasterCard has a new senior counsel for investigations, and the San Diego school system just sacked more than half its audit department. We apologize that this week’s jobs report is a bit late, but…
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TRACE International has published its latest review of global anti-corruption enforcement, touting a dramatic increase in enforcement last year, led by U.S. authorities. Enforcement activity essentially doubled last year, according to the organization’s annual Global Enforcement Report. There were 255 investigations into bribery of foreign officials conducted by 29 countries as of Dec. 31, 2016.…
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The SEC on Wednesday proposed requiring that public companies and mutual funds start submitting their financial filings using Inline XBRL—an advance that should make the preparation of financial reports much easier. XBRL is a technology that lets computers digest financial data quickly. It’s a godsend to financial analysts who want to answer specific research questions…
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Internal control enthusiasts everywhere are performing a root cause analysis of what went wrong at the Oscars this weekend, so Radical Compliance might as well get a piece of that action too. After all, when was the last time a control failure was household news? The debacle, for those last few who haven’t yet heard…
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Acting SEC Chairman Michael Piwowar gave a speech Friday that hit all the major themes compliance offices should expect from the SEC under the Trump Administration: a push for simplified disclosure, fewer corporate penalties, and easier standards for raising capital. Although, in one surprise twist, Piwowar did say he supports corporate penalties for violations of…
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This week’s compliance jobs report has a few bits of news about planning for regulatory reform: who on Team Trump might help plan it, and how the banking world is staffing up to respond to it. GRC software vendors were also busy this week, and Viacom is hiring for possibly the most interesting compliance job…
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We’re going to argue a lot in coming months about whether to exempt many more companies from compliance with Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Personally, I’m torn between those people who believe 404(b) compliance is crucial to good governance; and those who say expanding the exemption will allow more companies to go public. I…
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The auditing industry’s chief regulator has unveiled a database to let people find out which audit firm partners work on what client engagements. Audit firms don’t relish the idea, but anyone eager for more transparency into the auditing business now has it. The database, aptly named AuditorSearch, was launched by the Public Company Accounting Oversight…
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Yesterday I did another “Compliance in the Weeds” podcast with Tom Fox, where our subject of conversation were the Justice Department’s new guidelines for evaluating corporate compliance programs. That guidance—46 questions that prosecutors might ask about your compliance program, across 11 broad categories—is manna from heaven for corporate compliance officers. The questions are specific. They…
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Hallelujah! We have fresh guidance from the Justice Department about an effective FCPA compliance program, and a speech from a new official there who says enforcement will continue! And we all thought the Trump Administration could get nothing done. The guidance is an 11-part checklist apparently added to the Fraud Section’s website sometime last week.…
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