The privilege to serve on a corporate board is no longer the cushy experience of our forefathers.  The increase in enforcement actions has led to a dramatic change in the role – and the risks – facing corporate boards. Companies dread hearing lawyers recommend the need for an internal investigation.  Alarm bells and whistles go off and corporate board members have to take a deep...

The growth of the compliance industry has included an increase in business surveys and specific attitudes towards corruption and compliance programs.  They are interesting to read, not as the definitive source of business compliance trends, but as one of several pieces in the compliance puzzle. I try to follow most of the significant compliance surveys and look for interesting issues to highlight.  Every survey is...

Anti-Corruption Compliance Program Audits  October 1, 2013, 12 Noon – 1 PM EST Register: Here Companies are devoting more resources to monitoring their compliance and ethics programs.  Anti-Corruption compliance program audits are an important tool for companies to use to monitor the effectiveness of its compliance program.  There are a number of important issues to address in preparing for and conducting an audit. Join Michael Volkov,...

The Antitrust Division and practitioners live in their own world.  It is part of the fabric when you work in the Antitrust Division – it is an entity unto itself within the Department of Justice.  For years, the Antitrust Division has been able to fend off greater control by the DOJ heirchy by arguing that protecting competition and markets is a very specialized mission, requiring...

You never see the words “poor” and “JP Morgan” in the same sentence.  It is a historical oxymoron – the words do not fit together.  However, if you have been following the headlines lately – you have to think to yourself, “poor JP Morgan.”  How can a company get hit so hard, so many times, and expect to survive? The timing could not be any...

The latest hub-bub about hiring of relatives of foreign officials under the FCPA has raised a number of interesting questions.  JP Morgan’s recent disclosure of its hiring practices, the existence of a list of such hires which are apparently tied to foreign government contracts, raise serious questions about compliance with the FCPA. It is important to take a step back and analyze the issue under...

The internal corporate world mimics broader social forces.  A perfect example of this is a corporate disciplinary system and our criminal justice system. The analogy works like this – if justice is handed out in a disparate way, meaning that similarly situated individuals who commit the same offense are treated differently based on an improper factor, the integrity of the criminal justice system is questioned. ...

Hospitals are being squeezed on many fronts – government reimbursement for medical services are declining, government regulatory requirements are increasing, and the prospects for improvement are dwindling.   Medicare and Medicaid payments come with so many restrictions and conditions that healthcare providers, including hospitals, face serious business calculations on whether or not serving whole classes of patients are economically worth the trouble. Looking over the legal...

The SEC is taking a number of bold steps to promote the importance of compliance.  The SEC already offers companies meaningful compliance carrots as part of its cooperation program, and other enforcement initiatives including FCPA investigations. In two important enforcement actions, the SEC has reiterated – and even expanded – its commitment to compliance.  In the first decision, the SEC declined to prosecute a company...

Compliance professionals are not used to the world we live in today.  They are used to being a second-class citizen in the corporate governance structure.  That is all changing. Compliance and ethics professionals are the fastest rising stock on the corporate landscape.  Unfortunately, this has not yet translated into the corporate board nominations and appointment process. Every anti-corruption violation can ultimately be tied back to...