These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
Alstom Gets Break on Fine by Rachel Louise Ensign and Ted Mann in the Wall Street Journal
When the U.S. Justice Department announced a record $772 million foreign-bribery settlement with Alstom SA in December, there was a hitch: The French engineering company couldn’t pay without hurting its ability to do business.
So Alstom got a break: approval from a court to wait until its $17 billion deal with General Electric Co. closes before making the payment.
A Day In The Life Of Private Equity Giant TPG by Ben Walsh and Ryan Grim in the Huffington Post
At a 2012 investor conference, private equity giant TPG, which manages about $65 billion, showed a video documenting a day in the life of the firm to the audience of pension fund managers and other large, institutional investors. ” The video is set to the chords of Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and zooms around to TPG’s global offices.
The video, which has not previously been made public and was obtained by The Huffington Post, tries hard to make that day seem like an ostentatiously unglamorous, elite, ultra-competent corporate mission where value is delivered to investors with a smile.
As Regulators Focus on Culture, Wall Street Struggles to Define It by Emily Glazer and Christina Rexrode in the Wall Street Journal
As they emerge from years of bruising fines, layoffs and losses, big banks are trying more than ever to monitor employee attitudes and values to avoid future problems.
But they also have little choice: Senior officials with the Federal Reserve and other agencies in recent weeks have made it clear that they believe bad behavior at banks goes deeper than a few bad apples and are advising firms to track warning signs of excessive risk taking and other cultural breakdowns. Still, even regulators acknowledge culture is a difficult thing to measure.
Image of Snowy Brick Wall is by Kathleen Conklin