Boeing, Trade Wars, and Disclosures

boeing

Earlier this week we saw news that China has told local airlines there to stop taking delivery of Boeing airplanes, Beijing’s latest retaliatory move against President Trump’s tariffs. That gives us opportunity to consider the potential implications for financial reporting and risk disclosure — implications that might snare more companies as the trade war drags…

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FCPA Probe Into Digicel Closed

Digicel

The Justice Department has closed an FCPA investigation in a Caribbean telecommunications business, the second such closure since President Trump ordered a pause on all FCPA enforcement two months ago. The company in question is Digicel, headquartered in Jamaica and offering a range of mobile phone and internet services across the Caribbean. Digicel had first…

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DOJ Monitorship Policy Disappears

The Justice Department has pulled down its policy statement on when compliance monitors will be assigned as part of corporate misconduct resolutions, which seems as good a reason as any to catch up on all the news swirling around compliance monitorships these days. The Justice Department had previously posted its policy on monitorships on the…

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News Flash: Regulatory Climate a Total Mess

regulatory

Research firm Gartner has published a report documenting what most compliance officers have probably known for a while now: the bonkers regulatory environment these days is driving you all nuts.  Gartner released today its Quarterly Emerging Risk Report, with findings based on a survey of 266 senior risk assurance executives. The “unsettled regulatory and legal…

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So Much Anti-Corruption Compliance News!

corruption

We’ve seen a flurry of news in anti-corruption compliance this week — and while not all of it is bad, nor does it mean an end to corporate ethics and compliance, lots of it is rather disheartening. Let’s take a look and try to make sense of things. First is news from the Securities and…

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The Integrity Signal Through the Noise

Signal

Another week, another example from the Trump Administration of how not to run an organization if you have even a passing awareness of integrity, compliance, and common sense — none of which seem present in this pack of bumblers running the country. Our example is, of course, the Signal debacle. We presume that by now…

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Europe Forms Anti-Corruption Enforcement Team

corruption

Stay on your toes, compliance officers! Britain, France, and Switzerland have announced the launch of a new anti-corruption taskforce, meant to keep up the pressure against corporate bribery and corruption even as the Trump Administration retreats from it. The leaders of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, the Parquet National Financier in France, and the Office…

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Two Examples of Compliance Issues in Trump 2.0

Trump

Today we have two more examples of what ethics and compliance in the Trump 2.0 era might look like: one demonstrating the need for compliance capabilities right now, the other suggesting the ethics and integrity pressures companies could face in the future — and both worth compliance professionals’ attention, because folks, this stuff is coming.…

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FCPA and ‘Under Pressure From the President’

fcpa

One of the great puzzles (to me, at least) about President Trump’s pause of FCPA enforcement was why he might want to allow U.S. companies to engage in corruption with foreign government officials. Now we can conduct a useful thought experiment, courtesy of the news that BlackRock is buying two ports that control access to…

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Why Strong Compliance Still Matters So Much

compliance

Earlier this week I had the good fortune to attend a panel discussion here in Boston of compliance officers talking about how their approach to compliance might change thanks to the arrival of the Trump Administration. As I suspected, all of them said their approach really hasn’t changed at all — and they weren’t sure…

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