These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
We Are All Victims… Except Richard Bistrong by Roy Snell in The Compliance & Ethics Blog
Richard was a successful international salesman who selected a bad principle… bribery. He stuck to that principle like glue for 10 years. Before he got caught he hung out with the wrong people and became addicted to drugs but is now clean. After he got caught, he helped the UK and US try to catch other FCPA violations. He spent about 14 months in jail. There were a lot of other bad consequences of Richard’s wrongdoing. In my highly subjective opinion, enough of his life was ruined that I believe he paid for his mistakes. [More…]
Preparing for the SEC’s Increased Pursuit of Compliance Officers by Perkins Coie’s Luis R. Mejia, Mary C. (Molly) Moynihan, Martin E. Lybecker, Jesse P. Kanach
The SEC’s recent activity against CCOs should serve as a warning to all investment advisers, broker-dealers, and compliance professionals that it would be wise to review their policies, procedures, and practices to ensure they are adequate in today’s regulatory environment.
In a speech in late 2015, Andrew Donahue, Chief of Staff to SEC Chair Mary Jo White, outlined what he believes are the responsibilities of a CCO, and while some steps seem obvious, the list puts firms and compliance professionals on notice of the SEC’s expectations: [More…]
How Do LLC Owners Contract Around Default Statutory Protections? by Peter Molk in the CLS Blue Sky Blog
Delaware, the leader in out of state LLC formations, requires that owners and managers have only an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, leaving substantial space to tailor individualized terms to individual circumstances. Yet remarkably little is known about how, or even whether, LLCs exercise this discretion. Do parties fail to wield LLCs’ contractual flexibility, choosing to operate passively under unaltered default protections? Do they instead engage in robust bargaining for efficient terms? Or do they do something else entirely?
In a new paper, How Do LLCs Owners Contract Around Default Statutory Protections, I analyze a sample of 233 Delaware and 50 New York private LLC operating agreements to answer these questions. These agreements were obtained from exhibits attached to private litigation, offering a rare glimpse into the rules governing the inner workings of private companies spanning a range of sophistication, industry, and size. [More…]
Don’t put illegal conduct in power point slide presentations by Tom Fox in Compliance Week
The Man from FCPA occasionally puts on FCPA training. One of the things he highlights is not to put stupid stuff in e-mails. Such evidence can be clear signs something is amiss. However after this week, Fox has have to amend his training to add not to put illegal conduct into PowerPoint presentations to senior management, after it was reported in the New York Times that in 2006, a top technology executive at Volkswagenin prepared a slide deck for management, laying out in detail how the automaker could cheat on emissions tests in the United States. [More…]
To finish, a mash-up of real estate and art.
How to Work Better: Making a Mural on Houston Street by Caitlin Dover for Guggenheim
Hey, Doug. No comment on the body of your post, but that photo looks very familiar. There is something similar to it in Zurich. Taking the train out of the Zurich airport, heading east, and one of the buildings has a similar grafiti-art on the walls. And doing a search for “How to work better mural” turns up several instances. Neat!
This is a new mural on New York’s Houston Street. The original was installed in 1991 near a commuter rail line in Zurich.