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Investing in the Future

Investing in the Future – Episode 1 – Tabor McMillan

How do small towns and rural counties invest in their future? Tom Fox and Andrew Gay explore this topic in their new podcast series Investing in the Future – Developing Leadership in Kerr County. Leadership Kerr County is the premier leadership program in the Hill Country which enables men and women to learn more about the issues and topics that face Kerrville, Kerr County, and the Hill Country on a daily basis; everything from education and social services to economic development and health care. Kerr County has decided to invest in its citizens to create future leaders and lay a foundation for their future involvement in the leadership of Kerrville and Kerr County. This podcast is produced and hosted by the Texas Hill Country Podcast Network.

In our inaugural episode, we visit with Tabor McMillan, current chairman of the Leadership Kerr County Steering Committee. We discuss how his involvement in LKC and his passion for local leadership. He takes pride in living and raising his family here in the Texas Hill Country. Tabor is a local banker here in Kerr County.

Highlights include:

-How did he find out or hear about LKC?

-What was his experience when he was a class participant?

-What was involved with being a class participant?

-How does he feel about our ability in our community to make a difference locally?

Resources

Tabor McMillan on LinkedIn

Andrew Gay on LinkedIn

Tom Fox on LinkedIn

For more information on Leadership Kerr County, click here.

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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Internal Controls – Mapping Internal Controls

The SEC has continued to emphasize the accounting provisions of the FCPA, specifically the internal controls provisions. The reason is straightforward; a company with rigorous internal compliance controls is better able to prevent, detect and remedy any FCPA violations that may occur. What can you do around the FCPA’s requirements for internal controls and continued SEC enforcement emphasis? You should begin with an exercise where you map the internal controls your company has in place to the indicia of the Hallmarks of an Effective Compliance Program, as set out in the 2020 FCPA Resource Guide. While most compliance practitioners are familiar with the Hallmarks, you may not be as familiar with standards for internal controls. Here, begin with the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework as your starting point.

As a CCO or compliance practitioner, this is an exercise that you can engage in at no cost. You simply investigate and note what internal controls you have in place and how they may be a part of your anti-corruption efforts going forward. Compliance is a straightforward exercise; this does not mean that it is easy, you do have to work at it so that you will simply not have a paper, “check the box” program. But using the excuse that you have limited resources is simply an excuse and a rather poor one at that. While the clear lesson from the BHP enforcement action is that you are required to have effective internal controls in place, by engaging in this mapping exercise you can then figure out what you have and, more importantly, what internal compliance controls that you do not have and need to institute.

Three key takeaways:

1. Learn the internal controls your company currently has in place.

2. Map your compliance internal controls to the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework.

3. Use your gap analysis as a basis for remediation.

Categories
Creativity and Compliance

The Halo Effect

Where does creativity fit into compliance? In more places than you think. Problem-solving, accountability, communication, and connection – they all take creativity. Join Tom Fox and Ronnie Feldman on Creativity and Compliance, part of the award-winning Compliance Podcast Network.

Ronnie’s company, Learnings and Entertainment, utilizes the entertainment devices that people use to consume information in their everyday, non-work lives, and apply it to important topics around compliance and ethics. It is not only about being funny. It is about changing the tone of your compliance communications and messaging to make your compliance program, policies and resources more accessible.

In this episode, Tom and Ronnie discuss the Halo Effect and its role in compliance communications.

Highlights include:

  • What is the importance of making training and comms shorter? What makes it more entertaining, stickier, and helps compliance professionals get increased airtime and exposure, with their messages carried forward.
  • The Halo Effect, which is that people are left with a positive impression.
  • The Halo Effect is not a residual benefit…it is the benefit!
  • The opposite of the Halo Effect is called the Horn Effect…which is that people are left with a negative impression. Hello Compliance!
  • Your compliance reputation doe matter.
  • In every interaction compliance professionals have with employees and leaders, think about Halo’s and not Horns!
  • Maya Angelo once said, people won’t remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.

Resources:

Categories
Daily Compliance News

February 10, 2023 – The Going to War Edition

Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee, and listen to the Daily Compliance News. All from the Compliance Podcast Network. Each day we consider four stories from the business world, compliance, ethics, risk management, leadership, or general interest for the compliance professional.

Stories we are following in today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • SW blames the weather, and its pilots blame outdated tech. (Reuters)
  • 5th circuit says foreigners can be charged under FCPA for work outside the US. (Law360)
  • Starting the fight against corruption in schools. (Miami Herald)
  • Merck insurers deny payment for cyber-attack based on war exclusion. (WSJ)
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31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Internal Controls – Implementing Internal Controls

Today, I consider some ways in which a compliance professional can work to implement internal controls in a multi-national organization. The first step is to convert your company’s compliance risks into internal control objectives. The internal control objectives are then given to each business unit with instructions to develop controls, which meet the objectives. This process should allow more of a fine-tuning approach within existing systems than the development of specific controls by corporate which all business units must adopt and will give the business unit a sense of buy-in and participation in the process.

Good compliance internal controls are not some standalone protective measure. They can help to make a company run more efficiently as the internal controls that prevent FCPA violations are the same ones that prevent fraud in the workplace. The presence of good internal controls saves money by preventing fraud. It is a business best practice to prevent fraud, which includes preventing corruption. One need only consider Ethisphere and its annual survey of the world’s most ethical companies because they exceed the Standard & Poor’s index of average profits and growth by a factor of 4X. A key reason such companies have better than average profitability is that they have better internal controls.
Three key takeaways:

  1. Convert your compliance risks into internal control objectives.
  2. As with many components of a best practices compliance program, tone at the top is critical.
  3. If you receive pushback from the business folks, always remember, good internal controls make for a better, more efficient and more profitable business.
Categories
Everything Compliance

Episode 111 – The Duty of Oversight Edition

Welcome to the only roundtable podcast in compliance as we celebrate our second century of shows. Everything Compliance has been honored by W3 as the top talk show in podcasting. In this episode, we have the quintet of Jay Rosen, Karen Woody, Jonathan Marks, Tom Fox, and Matt Kelly, who review the recent Delaware Court of Chancery decision creating a duty of oversight for corporate officers. We conclude with our fan-fav Shout Outs and Rants section.

1. Matt Kelly sets the stage for our discussion and poses a question about what it all means for CCOs going forward. He rants to the State of Texas Legislature for creating a ‘Gold Card’ for physicians who have over 90% of all requested procedures covered by insurance. (1:30)

2. Jonathan Marks looks at the case from the internal audit and corporate governance perspectives. He rants about the Pentagon’s failure to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon.

3. Tom Fox shouts out to Hindenburg Research and all other short sellers who help uncover fraud, waste, and abuse.

4. Karen Woody looks at the case from a legal perspective and unpacks the court’s legal reasoning. Woody shouts to Amtrak and asks us to ‘ride the train more often.’ (11:08)

5. Jay Rosen reviews the changes wrought for CCOs over the past year, from CCO certification to the Delaware court decision. He shouts out to his twin daughters on their 15th birthday. (41:13)

The members of Everything Compliance are:

•       Jay Rosen– Jay is Vice President, Business Development Corporate Monitoring at Affiliated Monitors. Rosen can be reached at JRosen@affiliatedmonitors.com

•       Karen Woody – One of the top academic experts on the SEC. Woody can be reached at kwoody@wlu.edu

•       Matt Kelly – Founder and CEO of Radical Compliance. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com

•       Jonathan Armstrong –is our UK colleague, who is an experienced data privacy/data protection lawyer with Cordery in London. Armstrong can be reached at jonathan.armstrong@corderycompliance.com

•       Jonathan Marks is Partner, Firm Practice Leader – Global Forensic, Compliance & Integrity Services at Baker Tilly. Marks can be reached at jonathan.marks@bakertilly.com

The host and producer, ranter (and sometime panelist) of Everything Compliance is Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance. He can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Everything Compliance is a part of the Compliance Podcast Network.

Categories
Daily Compliance News

February 9, 2023 – The Fake Letter Edition

Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee, and listen to the Daily Compliance News. All from the Compliance Podcast Network. Each day we consider four stories from the business world, compliance, ethics, risk management, leadership, or general interest for the compliance professional.

Stories we are following in today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Wells Fargo settles yet another shareholder lawsuit. (Reuters)
  • Canada sanctions those involved in Haiti’s corruption. (ICIJ)
  • Don’t send the sentencing Judge a fake letter. (Bloomberg)
  • ABA doesn’t want to report suspicious transactions. (WSJ)

Categories
Wirecard

Monkeys in Suits

Welcome to Season 3 of Lies, Spies & Corporate Crimes: The Wirecard Saga. The Wirecard Saga, has become of the world’s leading sources on all things Wirecard. In Lies, Spies & Corporate Crimes: The Wirecard Saga; Mikhail Reider-Gordon, Managing Director of Institutional Ethics & Integrity at Affiliated Monitors looks at the biggest financial scandal in post-war Germany from a variety of angles.  In this episode, Mikhail brings us all up to date on the status of the court cases.

Some of the highlights include:

  • An entire Criminal Chamber for Wirecard
  • Does Braun have the sitzfleisch?
  • Bellenhaus’s selective memory
  • Just who exactly was falsifying the documents?
  • Bellenhaus beats back his better angels
  • A 500% raise demand
  • EY had two brushes with the fraud
  • Auditors give up public accounting licenses and
  • Apas closes its investigation
  • Court rejects motions to stay
  • Rejection may offer ultimate grounds for appeal
Categories
31 Days to More Effective Compliance Programs

One Month to More Effective Internal Controls – Risk Assessments and Internal Controls

Today, I will review how to use the risk assessment you have performed as a tool to provide a structured approach to establishing effective internal controls. After preparing the risk assessment, the next step is to prioritize listing the risks and which locations are common. This begins by mapping existing internal controls to risks and assessing whether the internal controls are sufficient to mitigate the risks.

To help with consistency in this evaluation process, assigning a risk weight to each element in the risk assessment may be useful. For example, a construction company might assign a higher weight to the presence of movable fixed assets. A company that sells exclusively through local distributors might assign a higher weight to the sales function than one that exclusively uses company employees for sales activities. However, it is structured; the assessment should result in the assignment of individual risk scores and a composite risk score for each location. These scores can then prioritize the locations dealing with control risks.

Top Risks Include:

Sales are conducted through third parties.

·       A U.S.-based international sales manager who is responsible for growing the business?

·       Sales channel uses a U.S.-based sales force that only travels to locations outside the U.S. for temporary visits of generally short duration.

·       Gifts, travel, and entertainment.

· High-risk jurisdictions.

·       Business ventures.

You can also utilize the COSO 2013 Internal Controls Framework, which created a more formal structure to design or assess the effectiveness of internal control within the five COSO components. A companion document, Internal Control over External Financial Reporting: A Compendium of Approaches and Examples, catalogued possible approaches and examples in the context of internal controls over financial reporting and could be useful for companies complying with internal compliance controls under the FCPA. COSO has also published an additional companion document, Illustrative Tools for Assessing Effectiveness of a System of Internal Control, which provides templates that may be used to support an assessment of internal controls and includes various scenarios which illustrate several practical examples of how the templates may be used.

Finally, consider a business unit in a geographic area such as the Far East where there is a significant amount of deference to supervisors in the local culture, such that even if an employee saw inappropriate behavior, it would not be expected that the employee would make any report or comment.

Three key takeaways:

1. Third-party risks are still your highest risks under the FCPA, so use your internal controls appropriately to help prevent this risk from becoming a violation.

2. Use mapping and gap analysis to collate risks to existing controls.

3. Always consider the regional and geographic variances.

Categories
Hill Country Authors

John Moore – The Country Writer

Welcome to the award-winning The Hill Country Authors Podcast. In this podcast, Hill Country resident Tom Fox visits with authors who live and write up the Texas Hill Country. In this episode, I visit with newspaper columnist John Moore. John Moore is a columnist across Texas and is featured in Kerrville Times. In this podcast, John talks with Tom Fox about his upbringing in Ashdown, Arkansas, in the Southwest corner of the state. John shares experiences in East Texas and its ecosystem and explains why the Razorbacks are very important due to the lack of professional sports teams. He covers his work in trading and liquidating antique cars and how his high school English teacher sparked his passion for writing. His most recent column is about television channels and movable antennas.

Key Takeaways:

●      The Ecological, Cultural, and Economic Impact of Oil Drilling in East Texas

●       The Impact of the Arkansas Razorbacks on Sports in the State

●       Reclaiming Childhood Memories with Antique Cars and Tractors

●       Pursuing a Passion for Writing, Encouraged by a Teacher

●       The Work of a Texas Native Newspaper Columnist

Notable Quotes:

“He would buy things, and he would bring them home, and he would fix them up, and he would sell them. And he brought home a black and white television set. And I remember the first thing I saw on that television set was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And I was hooked. I mean, I was just hooked. I was just fascinated by the stories, the suspense, the mystery, and the horror. And I just loved it.”

“East Texas is unique just as Texas is unique. People have a hard time understanding when they’re not from Texas when you tell them you’re going to say, Del Rio or El Paso, and it’s going to take a couple of days to get there in a car. They have no sense of how big this state of Texas is.”

“And I thought, if it’s in the paper, maybe my dad will think it’s a big deal. So I did it. Then the next thing I knew, I got a letter from a lady who said she and her husband wanted to buy my books. Well, I didn’t have any books. So I thought, well, I’ll write a book. So I wrote a book.”

“People asked me all the time. What’s it like in Texas? And I say, well, it’s no different where I live in Texas. It looks the same as where I grew up in Southwest Arkansas; the people are essentially the same. The morals are the same. People are very much people of faith here, just like they are where I grew up

 Resources

John Moore, The Country Writer