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Daily Compliance News

Daily Compliance News: July 11, 2023 – The A Nap a Day 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:

  • ECB governor goes on trial for corruption. (Bloomberg)
  • Napping at work is good for you. (FT)
  • Clarence Thomas accepted more gifts. (The Guardian)
  • More senior employees are mentoring younger employees. (WaPo)
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Daily Compliance News

Daily Compliance News: June 22, 2023 – Is the Supreme Court For Sale Edition

`Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance brings to you compliance-related stories to start your day. Sit back, enjoy a cup of morning coffee, and listen in 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.

  • SCt litigant pays for trip for Alito but ‘no conflict’. (NYT)
  • ZTE and Huawei employees accused of working at Chinese spy sites in Cuba. (WSJ)
  • Google launches AML tool. (WSJ)
  • FTC says Amazon duped consumers. (Reuters)
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Daily Compliance News

Daily Compliance News – May 3, 2023 – The Even in Illinois 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:

  • Florida bans ESG investment. (Reuters)
  • Oregon Sec of State resigns over COI.  (WSJ)
  • ComEd defendants found guilty. (Law360)
  • News Flash: Crypto is unreliable.  (WaPo)
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Daily Compliance News

April 25, 2023 – The Conflict of Interest 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:

  • Bullying-no threshold needed. (FT)
  • Does Davis Solomon do business with Goldman? (NYT)
  • The first NFT insider trading case kicks off. (Reuters)
  • Conflicts of interest at the Supreme Court. (Bloomberg)
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Daily Compliance News

December 6, 2022 the Glencore Pays Edition

Welcome to the Daily Compliance News. Each day, Tom Fox, the Voice of Compliance, brings you four 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.

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

  • Glencore to pay DRC $180MM.(FT)
  • Is IP litigation a fraud in the court? (Reuters)
  • AF retired generals consulting deals blocked due to COIs. (WaPo)
  • Credit Suisse says it is not responsible for ‘rogue employees.’ (Bloomberg)
Categories
Presidential Leadership Lessons for the Business Executive

Leadership Lessons from the Presidency of Zachary Taylor

In this episode, I consider what lessons might be learned from the presidency of Zachary Taylor the 12thPresident. Taylor only served 18 months, from 1849-1850. He died in office from over eating and drinking on the July 4thcelebration of 1850.

Taylor had a long career in the US Army prior to his election, during which time he successfully operated cotton plantations in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Mississippi. He was elected as a Whig, this despite refusing to commit himself to the party platform. He was the first President not to hold elective office. While Taylor is usually ranked in the bottom percentile of presidents, he is most generally described as more a forgettable president than a failed one. However, his biographer, John S. Eisenhower, argued he was the one man who could have hammered out a compromise on slavery that would have averted the civil war contemporaries. Finally, in the political realm, both Democrats and Whigs alike generally viewed his premature death as a national calamity.

What are some of the leadership lessons from the Presidency of Zachary Taylor.

1.Take a stand-One of the leadership lessons came from an inaction by Taylor. It began before he was even elected President, did not embrace the Whig political platform, or even declare himself a Whig until February of 1848 with the election only seven months away. He thought the President should stand above party politics, even to the extent of not taking a public stand and declaring himself as a Whig. Still, for leadership, the clear message is that sometimes you do have to take a stand.

2. You must be engaged-As a business leader, you must be engaged. Taylor’s military training influenced this thinking but that training and those instincts did not serve him as President.  A philosophy of trying to be above the fray just does not always work. As a CEO, a senior executive, a Board of Director, you must be engaged in your business. It does not mean you have to get into the weeds of tactical decision making but you must set the proper tone and then oversee it going forward.

3. Succession Planning-in the case of Taylor, we have that failure from a President who died in office, some 18 months into his presidency. Taylor and his Vice President, Millard Fillmore, did not even meet in person until only a week or two before the inauguration, so there was no time to build any sort of personal relationship. This lack of engagement with Fillmore, if not to consult, at least air out his thoughts and let him know which way he was thinking about issues, was a critical failure.

4. Conflicts of Interest-As a leader, you must be attuned to and stop conflicts of interest by your senior management. There was never any allegation that Taylor was personally corrupt. However, during the later days of his administration there was the Galphin affair. Before joining the Taylor cabinet, the Secretary of War, George W. Crawford, had served as a lawyer and had been involved in a 15-year lawsuit. During Taylor’s term and to his great embarrassment, he was paid nearly $100,000 to the President’s Secretary of War for his fee as counsel. The terms of the settlement meant that two Cabinet members had effectively offered a huge amount from the US treasury to a third member of the Cabinet. This was a huge scandal at the time.

A word on Taylor’s death. It seems that during the 1850 4th of July celebrations, Taylor consumed a large number of cherries, ice cream and milk. He subsequently came down with a severe stomach ache, which turned into something called cholera morbus. There is still a considerable debate over whether the doctors actually killed him with their treatment or whether he died from the intestinal ailment. Oddly enough, many of his cabinet members came down with very similar symptoms, so it seems most likely it was due to the sanitation in Washington DC at the time.

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Daily Compliance News

September 30, 2022 the Conflict of Interest Edition

In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Tyson Foods names the son of the Board Chair as CFO. (WSJ)
  • McKinsey-a force for not good? (NYT)
  • Big Fund corruption in China. (FT)
  • Elon Musk tries to get out of his SEC settlement yet again. (Reuters)
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Daily Compliance News

April 28, 2022 the Elon Slammed by Judge Edition


In today’s edition of Daily Compliance News:

  • Musk slammed by Judge in bid to overturn SEC Order. (NYT)
  • Judicial COI bill passes Congress. (Reuters)
  • Kirstjen Nielson joins Web3 company. (WSJ)
  • Archegos founder charged with fraud. (WSJ)
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This Week in FCPA

Episode 297 – the Ng Convicted edition


As the NY Mets have the best record in baseball and we prepare for the celebrations of Easter and Passover, Tom and Jay are back to look at some of the week’s top compliance and ethics stories in the Ng Convicted edition.
Stories

    1. Roger Ng was convicted. Tom in the FCPA Compliance and Ethics Blog.
    2. Lessons from DOJ’s first cyber fraud settlement? Annie Hudgins in the FCPA Blog.
    3. Depression as corporate materiality issue. Dick Cassin in the FCPA Blog
    4. Should CCOs be required to certify compliance programs? Mike Volkov in Corruption Crime and Compliance.
    5. CEO fined by SEC for impeding whistleblower. Aaron Nicodemus in Compliance Week. (sub req’d) Matt Kelly in Radical Compliance.
    6. How much BOD oversight of compliance is enough? Jeff Kaplan in Conflict of Interest Blog
    7. Compliance in recessionary times. Jim DeLoach in CCI.
    8. Water and corruption. Rick Messick in GAB.
    9. Why should an organization disclose diversity information? Antinuke Adrian in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.  
    10. Data governance best practices. Eray Eliaçik in Data Economy

Podcasts and More

  1. Tom visits with Matt Galvin and Dan Kahn over a 2-part podcast series. In Part 1, they talk about dealing with the DOJ during an FCPA investigation and thereafter. 
  2. Into Star Trek, then join Tom and John Champion, who is on a 15-year mission to do a podcast on every episode of Star Trek, television, movie, and animated show on the podcast MissionLogPodcast.com. In Part 1, from TOS up to the start of TNG. In Part 2, from TNG to today. 
  3. This month on the Compliance Life, I visit with Susan Divers, Director of Thought Leadership at LRN. In Part 1, academic life and early professional career. In Part 2, she moves to the corporate world. 
  4. Why should you attend Compliance Week 2022? Find out on this episode of From the Editor’s Desk. Listeners get a $200 discount to CW 2022 with the code Fox200. More here
  5. Join Tom and Jay at ECI Impact 2022. Listeners to this podcast can save 20% off registration
    by entering discount code: TOM20 at checkout.
  6. Welcome back, Sam Rubenfeld.

Tom Fox is the Voice of Compliance and can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com. Jay Rosen is Mr. Monitor and can be reached at jrosen@affiliatedmonitors.com.

Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

Mikhail Reider-Gordon on Conflicts of Interest

In this episode of the FCPA Compliance Report, I am joined by Mikhail Reider-Gordon, Managing Director at Affiliated Monitors, Inc. We discuss conflicts of interest with some very high-profile examples torn literally from the headlines. Highlights include:

·      What exactly is a Conflict of Interest and how does it differ from self-dealing, nepotism?

·      Is a COI purely an ethical problem or are there are situations where COIs are illegal?

·      COIs in the news of late and in some surprising places?

·      Have there been other examples across industries?

·      The Courts, the Fed, SCOTUS?

·      Do you ever come across COIs in your work?

        Resources

Original Posting on podcast on Integrity Through Compliance

Mikhail Reider-Gordon at AMI