Staples fired sales director Alan S. Noonan was fired for padding his expense report. Executive Vice President Jay Baitler sent an e-mail to approximately 1,500 employees explaining the reason for the firing. The e-mail contained no untruths, but Mr. Noonan sued for defamation anyhow. Unfortunately for Staples, truth is not a defense in Massachusetts if … Read more »
A Benchmarking Survey on Third-Party Codes of Conduct
Rebecca Walker of Kaplan & Walker LLP is the author of a report on A Benchmarking Survey on Third-Party Codes of Conduct (register to download) sponsored by The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. The SCCE received survey results from more than 400 compliance professionals on how they deal with third-party compliance policies. As Rebecca … Read more »
Ways Webinars Fail
After my webinar with Bruce Carton on Tuesday (Web 2.0: Leveraging new media to Maximize Your Securities and Compliance Practice), I ran across a three part series on Why Webinars Fail from Larry Kilbourne: Content Failures, Format Failures and, Process Failures. I hope we did not make too many of these mistakes: Cramming too much … Read more »
Compliance Building Is Now Mobile
To those of you who use mobile devices, I have installed a plugin that makes it easier to read Compliance Building on your mobile device. It looks great on my iPhone. At some point in the future I will add a little more pizzazz to the color scheme and maybe an image. It also renders … Read more »
COBRA Coverage Under ARRA
As part of the enormous stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal government included some relief for laid-off employees. Mark Spring discusses the COBRA subsidy in ARRA over at the California Labor and Employment Law Blog: The Stimulus Bill’s Impact on COBRA. The biggest change to COBRA is a … Read more »
Email Compliance 201
LiveOffice presented a webinar on records management issues related to electronic correspondence and archiving. (I missed the Email Compliance 101 session.) First up was Christina Rovira, Legal Compliance Advisor at CoreCompliance & Legal Services, Inc. She pointed out that SEC and FINRA require investment advisers and broker-dealers to supervise the business activities of their representatives. … Read more »
Roundtable Discusses Supply Chain Risks
On Jan. 27, 2009, Compliance Week and Integrity Interactive presented an editorial roundtable focusing on supply chain and vendor management risks. They were kind enough to invite me to participate. There is an article about the roundtable in the next issue of Compliance Week and a copy is available on line: Roundtable Discusses Supply Chain … Read more »
Is Investor Protection the Top Priority of SEC Enforcement?
Stavros Gadinis a Post-Graduate Fellow at Harvard Law School has published a paper: Is Investor Protection the Top Priority of Sec Enforcement? Evidence from Actions Against Broker. Abstract: Recent financial collapses have focused policymakers’ attention on the financial industry. To date, empirical studies have concentrated on corporate issuer activity, such as securities offerings and class … Read more »
The Stanford Fraud
Yesterday, the SEC filed a complaint against R. Allen Stanford and three of his companies: Antiguan-based Stanford International Bank, Houston-based broker-dealer and investment adviser Stanford Group Company, and investment adviser Stanford Capital Management. Tuesday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported on Stanford Depositors head to Antigua or Redemptions. Word had gotten out that the authorities … Read more »
Five Things Every Legal Practice Should Know About 2.0
At the recent LegalTech conference, Lee Bryant and May Abraham presented on Web 2.0 tool inside law firms (a/k/a Enterprise 2.0). Lee shares his thoughts on his Headshift blog: Five Things Every Legal Practice Should Know About 2.0: In the session, we tried to get across just how easy it is to find meaningful use … Read more »