These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
The Unsophisticated Sophisticated: Old Age and the Accredited Investors Definition by Tao Guo, Michael S. Finke and Chris Browning in the CLS Blue Sky Blog
Using two large nationally-representative data sets that include financial literacy tests, we find that financial literacy scores decline in old age consistently among both accredited and non-accredited investors in both data sets. Average scores for accredited investors age 80 and older are significantly lower (45.7% in one data set and 57.1% in the other) than average scores for respondents age 60-64 (60.4% and 63.8%) who do not meet the accredited investor income and wealth thresholds. [More…]
DOJ Says Pursuing ‘Higher-Impact’ Bribery Cases by Stephen Dockery in the Wall Street Journal
Spokesman Peter Carr said after years of handling smaller cases coming from corporate self-reporting, the unit is now putting more at stake and going after blockbuster cases. Initiatives to boost foreign corruption enforcement personnel and resources are being used to go after that high-profile wrongdoing, Mr. Carr said. Many of those programs began years ago.
His comments came in response to news that the Department’s anti-bribery efforts were eclipsed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the third quarter. [More…]
The Psychology of Cheating and FCPA Compliance by Thomas Fox in the FCPA Compliance Report
In the movie Margin Call, Jeremy Irons intones that there are three ways to win in business: (1) be the smartest; (2) be the fastest; and (3) cheat. I am currently out at the SCCE 2015 Compliance and Ethics Institute and as you might guess the Volkswagen (VW) emissions-testing scandal is a major topic of conversation. One of the more interesting observations is that the VW scandal was not a failure of compliance but an intentional design to cheat emissions standards testing on a worldwide basis. [More…]
The image is from the Apollo 17 Archive on FLickr