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?
We all know the saying – A fish rots from the head. Sometimes a clear and simple statement says it all. The Volkswagen diesel emissions cheating scandal is yet another example of C-Suite, even CEO, misconduct....more
So much for the quiet off-ramping for SoFi’s Mike Cagney. The fintech company’s board announced on Friday that Cagney is out immediately as CEO, not at the end of the year as Cagney had announced earlier in the week....more
When unraveling a major corporate scandal, especially multi-year schemes involving senior executives, the blame game or lessons learned approach can easily turn into a fruitless exercise. The VA and Takata scandals are...more
One of three counts in Volkswagen’s recent $4.3 billion guilty-plea was for obstruction of justice arising from a litigation-hold botched by house counsel. As VW prepared to admit the defeat-device problems to US...more
Corporate misconduct occurs in a variety of forms. Starting with the basic truism – companies act through people, and when companies engage in misconduct it requires the coordination and collaboration of multiple actors. The...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
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
Last week, the Justice Department reported a guilty plea in the VW emissions scandal prosecution. By this one announcement, DOJ signaled that it is planning to build a bigger case against VW. Ironically, the Justice...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
VW Will Pay $14.7B in Largest FTC False Ad Suit - Volkswagen made a $14.7 billion deal with the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the California Attorney General over charges that the auto...more
Today I continue my exploration of the Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1, 1916. Daniel Todman writing in the Financial Times (FT), in an article entitled “Stories of the Somme”, insightfully noted that for all the...more
Tris Coffin heads the Vermont Volkswagen Class Action litigation team at DRM that also includes Directors Bob Luce and Marc Heath. On the evening of April 20, a number of news outlets published stories that Volkswagen...more
There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.” If you went to college in the 70s or 80s (or maybe even the 90s) you know what the next album is, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. For in the...more
Welcome back my friend; To the show that never ends. Except it did last week, when Keith Emerson died. He was the Emerson in Emerson, Lake & Palmer aka ELP. Emerson was one of the greatest keyboardists of his or any...more
Whom to suspend during any Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) investigation is always a delicate question to answer. Unfortunately there is never an easy answer. As the Volkswagen (VW) emission-testing scandal continues to...more
Sometimes the simplest visual can provide the greatest insight about transformation. I had that particular insight when I recently had the chance to catch up with Scott Lane, Chief Executive of the Red Flag Group, at the SCCE...more
Today, I wrap up my series on why I think compliance is at the Tipping Point. However as it is a Friday in October, I continue my tribute to the Man in the Shadows, producer Val Lewton, whose films for RKO had some of the...more
I continue my series on why I believe that compliance is at the ‘Tipping Point’ with a discussion of the Volkswagen (VW) emissions-testing scandal and its effect on the greater compliance world. Myself and many other...more
Many Americans listened last week to the admissions by the now former President of Volkswagen that the company had been “dishonest” and had cheated on the U.S. emissions tests. How was this happening at the world’s #1...more
The Board of Directors role in the Volkswagen (VW) emissions test scandal is one that is only now being scrutinized. In an article in the New York Times (NYT), entitled “Problems at VW Start at the Boardroom”, James B....more
Things are seriously bad when one of the world’s most respected business focused publications, the Financial Times (FT), asks if the auto “industry faces ‘Libor moment’”? Yet that was a headline yesterday in the lead article...more