A Messy Picture for Risks in 2022

risk

Consulting firm Protiviti recently published its annual survey of enterprise risks worrying corporate leaders for the coming year. As always, the survey is worth a look so you can decipher what might be on the minds of your board and C-suite, and then anticipate the ways they’ll likely exasperate you over the next 12 months.…

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Ozy Media’s Governance Flop

ozy

You may have missed this, but last week a media business with oodles of funding from Silicon Valley closed up shop because of flawed leadership behavior that culminated in accusations of fraud. Which gives us yet another opportunity to talk about the importance of board governance to keep leaders’ ethical conduct correct. The media business…

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SEC Commish Talks ESG, Board Governance

ESG

SEC commissioner Allison Herren Lee delivered a speech Monday forcefully laying out the need for corporate boards to take ESG risks and disclosures seriously, presumably as a prelude to whatever enhanced ESG disclosure rules the Securities and Exchange Commission will adopt sometime later this year.  Lee, who has spoken about ESG issues numerous times and…

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Citigroup, Part III: Better Board Oversight

citigroup

Today we return to Citigroup and its $400 million regulatory settlement from earlier this month, a case that offers a cornucopia of lessons for risk and compliance professionals. This time around, we consider what Citi’s board will need to do to rectify the bank’s poor internal governance.  First, let’s recap the case so far. The…

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Jerry Falwell and CEO Oversight

falwell

The Lord works in mysterious ways, and compliance professionals witnessed that again this week. The Supreme Being sent us a flock of governance lessons to consider from the downfall of Jerry Falwell Jr., who just resigned as president of Liberty University amid a sex scandal. Falwell had been leader of the evangelical college since 2007.…

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Investigations, Governance, and Romance

investigations

Heartbreaker of a tale unfolding at the Romance Writers of America this week: a misconduct complaint filed against the head of the RWA’s ethics committee has backfired, leading to a revolt of the group’s membership, half the board resigning in protest, and the organization’s flagship event canceled for 2020.  Ethics and compliance professionals should give…

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Podcast: The Board-CCO Relationship

board

Chief compliance officers are always looking for ways to maintain a productive relationship with the board, which isn’t easy considering all the issues both sides are trying to manage in a compressed amount of time. So today we have a podcast and column devoted to the subject. The podcast is a conversation I had with…

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CCOs Serving on Corporate Boards

board

This week I had the privilege of moderating a forum in New York for ethics and compliance officers who wanted to talk about an idea that makes tremendous sense: CCOs serving on corporate boards.  After all, regulators increasingly want companies to embrace a culture of compliance that avoids corporate misconduct in the first place, or…

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Report: Misalignment on Risk Management

risk

The Institute of Internal Auditors just dropped an unsettling new report on the state of risk management. Namely, corporate board directors believe their organizations are better at managing key risks than corporate executives do — and an uncomfortably high number of executives and directors say that misalignment is OK.  The report, OnRisk 2020: A Guide…

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Podcast: CCOs Serving on Boards

board

Regular readers of Radical Compliance know that I believe ethics and compliance officers serving on corporate boards is a superb idea. More and more of the governance challenges boards face, as they try to position their organizations for success, somehow touch upon ethics and compliance issues. Well, who understands those issues better than professional ethics…

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