Showing results for: “backdating”
Illinois Corporate Colloquium: Choi on SEC backdating investigations
Yesterday at the Illinois Corporate Colloquium Steve Choi presented his paper (with Pritchard and Weichman), Scandal Enforcement at the SEC: Salience and the Arc of the Option Backdating Investigations. Here’s the abstract: We study the impact of scandal-driven media scrutiny on the SEC’s allocation of enforcement resources. We focus on the SEC’s investigations of option ... Illinois Corporate Colloquium: Choi on SEC backdating investigations
The opportunity costs of the backdating scandal
I have blogged extensively about the waste and injustice of the overblown backdating scandal. (The posts are collected in Ideoblog’s executive compensation archive). Now we have an accounting of the opportunity costs of the SEC’s pursuit of this so-called scandal. Here’s the abstract of Choi, Pritchard and Wiechman, Scandal Enforcement at the SEC: Salience and ... The opportunity costs of the backdating scandal
Corporate jets: the new backdating?
Looks like a new scandal is brewing. A WSJ article co-written by one of the backdating reporters (Mark Maremont) looks through FAA flight records to find that dozens of jets operated by publicly traded corporations made 30% or more of their trips to or from resort destinations, sometimes more than 50%. Often, these were places ... Corporate jets: the new backdating?
Angelo’s escape
So Mozilo won’t be criminally prosecuted for Countrywide. Holman Jenkins writes in today’s WSJ: The incentive to bring a case against a vilified public figure, of course, is huge. Weighed against this, however, must be the chance of being humiliated by a judge, possibly censured, now that the legal system has started blowing the whistle ... Angelo’s escape
More backdating detritus
I’ve written (e.g.) about the misguided criminal prosecutions spawned by the backdating so-called scandal. WSJ’s Holman Jenkins, who has been on the story from the beginning, echoes these sentiments, emphasizing the real scandal of the prosecutorial misconduct spawned by backdating: it’s . . . hard not to see the self-interested ethics of the plaintiff’s bar ... More backdating detritus
An epitaph for backdating
Peter Lattman reports on the Karatz case as an epitaph for the whole backdating so-called scandal: “These prosecutions went out with a whimper rather than a bang,” said Christopher J. Clark, a criminal defense lawyer at Dewey LeBoeuf who has done work on backdating cases. “With few convictions and no substantial sentences, juries and the ... An epitaph for backdating
Jail time for backdaters
I’ve blogged fairly extensively about backdating, including serious questions about whether and when it was wrong at all, and even more serious questions about whether it should be criminalized. Among the specific issues are whether any misrepresentations were material to investors. And then there’s the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct that has occurred in these cases. ... Jail time for backdaters
The Dell rule
More than three years ago I provided this “corporate crime primer”: The Apple Rule provides for an exception from corporate criminal liability when a popular business executive is accused of, or presides over a company that is accused of, misconduct. “Popular” is defined as “liked by journalists.” * * * By contrast, when an “unpopular” ... The Dell rule
The pressures on prosecutors
Tomorrow’ WSJ has an interesting story that sheds light both on why we haven’t seen prosecutions from the recent financial crisis, and why we saw so many before that. The story discusses the decision not to prosecute AIG’s Joe Cassano – the “man who crashed the world.” I discussed this decision last April, noting how ... The pressures on prosecutors
The Supreme Court partially decriminalizes agency costs
In the Skilling-Black case, the Court struck down “honest services” wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1346 in the absence of bribery/kickback allegations and remanded for determinations whether the errors in applying the statute justify reversals. But the Court also held that adverse pretrial publicity and community prejudice did not prevent Skilling from obtaining a fair ... The Supreme Court partially decriminalizes agency costs
Update on backdating
It’s been quite a while since we discussed backdating here at TOTM. But back when it was all the rage, we were substantial contributors, formulating (we believe) some of the first fundamental explanations of the issues. Some of the best posts from our backdating archive are here: I look pretty young but I’m just backdated, ... Update on backdating
Some Links …
There was a lot of backdating … yawn… oh, and Brett Favre is coming back The WSJ editorial page thinks the liberal boycotts of Whole Foods in response to CEO John Mackey’s op-ed on health care reform won’t have any real effects because because “real protest would require the store’s hyperprogressive customers to withdraw forever ... Some Links …
