Compliance Perspectives: Volkswagen's Transformation
Daily Compliance News: March 3, 2020, the Devil’s Advocate edition
Compliance into the Weeds-Episode 62, Sentencing of VW Employee Oliver Schmidt
Day 20: What Does Innovation in Compliance Look Like?
Auditing giant Ernst & Young will pay $100 million to U.S. authorities as part of a deal to resolve claims that “some of its auditors had cheated on ethics exams—and that the firm had done nothing to stop the practice.” That...more
A federal jury in Brooklyn has found former HSBC Holdings exec Mark Johnson guilty on 9 counts of front-running that grew out of the DOJ’s investigation into forex manipulation at HSBC....more
Hoping to reverse recent years of struggles, J. Crew is bidding farewell to CEO Mickey Drexler (though he’ll stay on as chairman) in favor of West Elm’s James Brett....more
Local-TV powerhouse Sinclair Broadcast Group isn’t all that well known outside of the Baltimore area, but it’s making a big play for the national stage as it nears a deal to buy Tribune Media—the former “Tribune empire’s...more
Ex-VW-Chairman Ferdinand Piech has thrown a wrench in the automaker’s official narrative of the emissions cheating scandal by suggesting, in sworn testimony, that the company knew of the cheating months before it was...more
The CFPB has ordered UniRush (purveyor of the RushCard prepaid debit card) and its payment processor, MasterCard, to fork over $13 million in fines after a breakdown last year that blocked thousands of customers from...more
As we look across the corporate governance landscape and focus on the spikes of corporate scandals, I started to wonder if there was any pattern or trend to the nature of corporate scandals....more
The emissions cheating scandal that recently cost VW $4.3 billion and a mess of criminal indictments isn’t, it seems, confined to the Germans. We heard months ago about a similar probe into Mitsubishi, and yesterday we...more
The headline a few days ago was the arrest of VW exec Oliver Schmidt during an ill-advised trip to Miami last week. But the DOJ also indicted five other top executives over their role in VW’s emissions cheating scandal. No...more
Some early signs of the focus of SoftBank’s “hugely ambitious” $100 billion investment fund are beginning to emerge, and at first blush, it appears a majority of the cash will land in private and public markets rather than...more
By volume, December wasn’t an incredible month for US jobs. But the report did help cap a year that saw average hourly earnings rise 2.9%—the best since 2009 and a “turning point for the overall economy,” according to one...more
On the Hill yesterday, Fed Chair Yellen acknowledged that the recent election would likely mean changes for the economy, but she said it was “too soon” to predict the nature of that economic impact at this time (though that...more
In a closely watched battle over the DOL’s new fiduciary rule for retirement account investment advisers, the Labor Department has scored an early first victory. A DC federal judge ruled late last week that the rule at issue...more
Some good news for the UK after a brutal few days for the pound? It appears that the pound’s precipitous fall has acted as a sort of “giant shock absorber” against Brexit—a release valve of sorts that has meant decreased...more
Plaintiffs in the Forex MDL currently in NY federal court argued this week to Judge Lorna Schofield that the 2d Circuit’s recent ruling dismissing some plaintiffs in an aluminium price fixing suit did not apply to rob them of...more
We’ve heard about VW’s $15 billion settlement to resolve US claims by owners and regulators, but a spate of recent state AG-led actions shows that the fallout from the emissions cheating scandal is far from over. NY, MA, and...more
William Ackman’s multi-year effort to expose Herbalife as a Ponzi scheme (and make good on his massive short of its stock) saw something of a moral victory last week, with the FTC imposing big-time sanctions ($200 million in...more
Continuing Brexit coverage: With the pound in freefall and markets going haywire, leaders on both sides of the Brexit debate in the UK signaled today that Britain hopes to stay in the EU marketplace, while some in Parliament...more
We reported last week on the additional $2 billion that Uber took in through the leveraged loan market. Andrew Ross Sorkin gives us an interesting reason for why Uber’s still got its hat in hand ($15 billion cash in hand and...more
US financial regulators dropped some much-anticipated rules yesterday that aim to restrict how “big financial institutions can pay their top executives.” In particular, the rules would make banker wait “at least four years...more
US stocks followed their global counterparts yesterday on a nasty open to 2016 on Wall Street – NYTimes and WSJ... Andrew Ross Sorkin makes a byline appearance in Dealbook to discuss “designated lender counsel”—a “rather...more