These are some of the compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
Stop Faxing by David Smyth in Cady Bar the Door
The problem was the same as with all faxes: nobody wants them. They want emails instead. So when the firm set up an electronic faxing service, they added an extra step in the communication chain, and routed the faxes to email addresses. While they should have sent those faxes to email addresses with the firm’s domain name, thousands went to personal email addresses instead. Those personal email addresses were outside the firm’s communication management system, and the data in the faxes was unprotected. [More…]
Recent Criticisms of the SEC: Fair or Unfair? by Jon Eisenberg and Shanda N. Hastings of K&L Gates
Over the last few years, the SEC has been criticized for (1) failing to “consistently and aggressively enforce the securities laws and protect investors and the public,” (2) obtaining sanctions that amount to only a slap on the wrist against major financial institutions, (3) settling rather than taking big banks to trial, 4) failing to name individuals in enforcement actions, (5) failing to require that companies admit guilt, (6) granting waivers from the collateral consequences of enforcement actions, and, most recently, (7) failing to prevent a prominent hedge-fund manager from getting back into the hedge-fund business. [More…]
Yates Assesses Effects of ‘Yates Memo’ by Samuel Rubenfeld in the WSJ.com’s Risk & Compliance Journal
Ms. Yates said Tuesday that despite predictions that companies would no longer cooperate, they’re now making “real and tangible efforts” to comply with U.S. requirements. They’re even providing troves of documents, called “Yates Binders,” that contain the relevant emails of individuals being questioned by the government, she said. Ms. Yates also said the new approach is causing positive change within companies, where she said compliance officers are helping steer employees toward best practices and higher standards.
“That’s exactly what we had hoped for. After all, it is much better to deter bad conduct from happening in the first place than to have to punish it after the fact,” said Ms. Yates, according to her prepared remarks. [More…]
Measuring Culture by Erica Salmon-Byrne This post originally appeared on Ethisphere Insights
Measuring culture is a topic many companies struggle with – or have delegated to HR to handle through an engagement survey. It should be noted that while engagement is a critical component of culture, it isn’t a synonym – a good engagement survey is no substitute for a culture survey, because how someone feels about their benefits, their work environment and their colleagues is not a proxy for how likely they are to tell you when something’s gone wrong in the company. And at the end of the day, that’s your key metric – how likely are your employees to notice misconduct, and to tell you about it? [More…]
America! The Cyclist Is Not Your Enemy by Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal
But it’s exasperating to see how Bad Cyclist anecdotes receive equal treatment to voluminous statistical evidence that cycling makes communities better. It’s maddening to watch public meetings where bike lanes are raged over like they’re landing pads for Martian armies. The transportation data is incontrovertible: Streets that accommodate for cycling get safer. Fewer people get hurt. Fewer people get killed. People on bikes and people walking on the street. Everybody. Even people in automobiles. [More…]
