Categories
FCPA Compliance Report

A Dark Day for Dechert

In this episode, I visit with Jonathan Armstrong, partner at Cordery Compliance in London. We consider the recent payment by the international law firm Dechert of £20 million for its conduct and that of its former partner Neil Gerrard in the ENCR affair. The matter was a dark day for Dechert and a black eye on the legal profession. Some of the highlights include:

Key areas we discuss on this podcast are:

·      What were the failures of the law firm?

·      What led to the £20 million interim payment?

·      Will there be discipline against the law firm?

·      What is the role of a law firm in overseeing investigations?

·      How are the implications of holding investigative data under GDPR going forward?

·      Who watches the watchers (and investigators)?

 Resources

Jonathan Armstrong on Cordery Compliance

Hannah Walker in Law.com on the scandal

Categories
Everything Compliance

Episode 103 – the All Shout Outs and Rants Edition

Welcome to the only roundtable podcast in compliance as we celebrate our second century of shows. In 2021, Everything Compliance was honored by W3 as a top talk show in podcasting. In this episode, we have the quartet of Jonathan Marks, Jonathan Armstrong, and Matt Kelly. In this episode, devote the entire episode to some of our favorite shout-outs and rants and mine them for compliance lessons learned. We conclude with recent news stories for a contemporary Shout Outs and Rants section.

1. Jay Rosen has a series of shout-outs and rants. He rants about former VP Dick Cheney, who created the conditions for today’s GOP leading to the defeat of his daughter Liz Cheney in her primary; spinless Roger Goodell for his hapless leadership of the NFL, and concludes with a shout-out to Little Leaguer, Isaiah Jarvis who hugged Kaiden Shelton after being hit in the head by a Shelton pitch. Rosen rants about ESPN stupidly losing the rights to broadcast Big 10 football.

2. Matt Kelly rants about Harmony Montgomery, who died after 2 years of abuse by her father because no one believed her mother that she was in danger. His lesson is that we must listen to whistleblowers. Kelly has a dual shout-out and rant. He shouts out to the campaign being run by John Fetterman for Senate in Pennsylvania and rants about the GOP for seeking the unredacted affidavit which supports the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago.

3. Jonathan Marks rants about the restaurant Chipotle and how they treat live in-person orders differently from online orders you pick up at a store. He shouts out to USC student Jake Freeman for making $110MM on Bed Bath and Beyond stock and rants about the continued failure to depart a CAE or CCO an 8K event.

4. Tom Fox has a cautionary tale (with a tip of the hat to fellow podcaster Tim Harford) about the importance of good corporate governance in the saga of Blue Bell Ice Cream.

5. Jonathan Armstrong rants about the damage to the image of the legal profession in the UK down by Neil Gerrard during his time at Dechert for their representation of ENRC. He rants about cookie claimants who don’t take the summer off.

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.