Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, speaking at a bank investor conference said Bitcoin “is a fraud” and will blow up. Further, that if any JPMorgan traders were trading the crypto-currency, “I would fire them in a second, for two reasons: It is against our rules and they are stupid, and both…
I’m attending the PERE CFOs & CCOs Forum. These are my notes from the session. On a scale of 1 to 5 the attendees created a classic bell curve on how confident we felt about our cybersecurity programs, with most choosing “3.” The panel labeled social engineering as the upcoming threat. There were several stories…
As financial firms are the recipients of more and more reporting obligations from government regulators, I find it amusing to note when the lawmakers fail in their own reporting obligations. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Senator Bob Corker failed to disclose millions of dollars in his financial reports. The senator is the third-ranking…
At its latest meeting, the Securities and Exchange Commission approve the rule that lifted the ban on general solicitation and advertising for certain private placements. The SEC also adopted the new rule that disqualifies felons and other bad actors from participating in certain securities offerings. The first rule was mandated by the JOBS Act. The…
I’m sure you heard in the news that JP Morgan lost $2 billion in a trades using complex derivatives tied to corporate bond defaults. But didn’t we fix this two years ago when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act? It seems like JP Morgan’s mistakes should be the first test…
In a night out that only a compliance geek would love, I spent Monday night listening to Malcolm Salter talk with Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Center’s director, Lawrence Lessig, hosted the event in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School. The…
If you want to improve governance at a corporation, do you need professional directors? Did SOX merely add a layer of legal obligations of board, and do little to improve the quality of those serving as directors? Robert C. Pozen makes the case in The Case for Professional Boards in the December issue of the…
There have been many stories written about the Goldman Sachs investment in Facebook. On one hand, there is the chatter about the investment placing the valuation at $50 billion. On the other, there hand there is the talk about how this affects a possible IPO by Facebook. There are two main reasons for an public…
Last week, the NYSE Euronext released the final report of the NYSE–sponsored Commission on Corporate Governance. The report identified 10 core governance principles. They cover the scope of the board’s authority, management’s responsibility for governance and the relationship between shareholders’ trading activities, voting decisions and governance. The Commission on Corporate Governance was established in the…
The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) publishes the Directorship 100. They surveyed 15,000 public company directors and executives to form the final 100 honorees. I was interested to see how they broke them into groups: Regulators and Rule Makers Directors CEOs Governance Policy Makers Attorneys Investors Auditors Recruiters Compensators D&O Insurers, Governance Advisors Corporate…