Failure to Earn: What Scattershot Enforcement of Sarbanes-Oxley Clawbacks Tells Us About Paybacks Under Dodd-Frank

I wrote at MarketWatch about the SEC’s proposed Dodd-Frank clawback rule.

New Orleans January 2008: "He leadeth me beside still waters…"

I went to New Orleans in January 2008 for a few weeks to work with Habitat for Humanity building new houses. Here’s a slide show of what I saw three years after Katrina in the 9th Ward New Orleans LA.  Just went down on my own and joined a random group.  There was still a […]

SEC News at MarketWatch

On July 21 Dodd-Frank will be five years old. If I hadn’t been through the same thing with Sarbanes-Oxley now twice, I’d be more excited. But the partisan rancor on this law, especially at the SEC, is even worse.

Looking Into SEC’s Equity Markets Structure Committee at MarketWatch

My piece on the SEC’s new Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee, spanning several online pages, is now out at MarketWatch.

Deloitte US First Female CEO; There’s More We Don’t Know

Wouldn’t it be nice if investors and other interested parties could look up new Deloitte US CEO Cathy Engelbert in a public and easily accessible registry and find out about all the audit clients where she has been a lead partner or a Quality Control partner? Has she ever been named in a lawsuit or been sanctioned? Let’s hope not.

Journalists’ Obligations In The Shareholder Value Maximization Debate

I wrote about two journalists who penned sympathetic stories about shareholders and other stakeholders who can’t get their voices heard but who, in service to shorter and simpler narratives, paid short shrift to the active and contentious debate about shareholder primacy and shareholder value maximization.

Auditors Can Be Whistleblowers: A Guest Post On Recent Developments In Whistleblower Case Law

Several recent developments regarding auditor whistleblowers should be of interest to internal and external auditors and compliance professionals, whether they work for a public company or a professional services provider.

You’ll Never Eat Lunch… A Review of “This Town” By Mark Leibovich

Mark Leibovich’s “This Town” is billed in the flap copy of the dust jacket as “a blistering, stunning —and often hysterically funny— examination of our ruling class’s incestuous ‘media industrial complex.’” Does anyone still eat lunch with him? In the new 24-7 news cycle, the half-life of any criticism of DC culture is about three days.

Guest Post From Eric Starkman: The “Unvarnished” Truth About General Motors

GM is in trouble again and this time it’s worse than some weak internal controls or even a bankruptcy. Cost cutting may have discouraged the prompt replacement of faulty ignition switches now linked to at least 13 fatalities and the recall of 2.6 million vehicles. Are you still glad we bailed the company out?

A Need for Transparency In Financial Staffing: A Guest Post From Dan Gaffney

According to Freelancers Union, almost one-third of the American workforce is independent. That’s nearly 42 million people and growing. The staffing industry, which should support the wave of new freelancers, hasn’t adapted since William Russell Kelly founded the Russell Kelly Office Service in Detroit in 1946.