Compliance News Roundup: Improving Corporate Governance in the Middle East
Happy Friday to everyone. Let’s kick off the final day of the week with our Compliance News Roundup. Titles, excerpts, links below:
Time for Transparency: What Will It Take to Improve Corporate Governance in the Middle East?
Last month, news broke that Nabil al-Boushi, an Egyptian brokerage owner based in Dubai, swindled his clients — including several celebrities — to the tune of millions of dollars. Among other things, he is thought to have used money from Egyptian investors to pay off investors in the United Arab Emirates, while falsely claiming to have had relationships with top government officials in the region. His doings brought to mind another person in the news: Bernard Madoff, the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, who has been charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme and duping numerous well-heeled investors, both in the United States and elsewhere.
As al-Boushi’s dealings were brought to light, he was quickly termed the “Egyptian Madoff” in the press — and in both cases, the finger pointing began. As if that weren’t enough, investors in the region had already been spooked by the ongoing long-term probe into allegations of bribery and corruption at Dubai Islamic Bank and its subsidiaries, which sent more than 20 executives to jail.
To what extent might strong and enforceable financial regulations and good corporate governance standards have kept these frauds from happening — or at least limited their impact? How important are such regulations to help buoy investor confidence in the Middle East, especially since oil prices have taken a nose dive? Knowledge@Wharton asked several experts for their take on this timely issue.
>>>read entire article at Knowledge @ Wharton
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Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ enforcement analyzed
The Center for Corporate Equality has issued an in-depth study, entitled, A Review of OFCCP Enforcement Statistics: A Call for Transparency in OFCCP Reporting. As the name suggests, the report analyzes the fiscal year 2007 enforcement results by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, part of the Department of Labor.
>>>read entire article at Examiner.com
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Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria to Loosen Bank Secrecy Rules
Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria said they will cooperate with foreign tax authorities by providing information in specific cases, joining Liechtenstein and Andorra in softening bank secrecy laws.
Switzerland will comply with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s rules for combating tax offenses to avoid landing on the group’s “black list” of tax havens, Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz said.
>>>read entire article at Bloomberg.com
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Hovnanian’s pay too high
Corporate governance firm Proxy Governance Inc has recommended that shareholders withhold votes from the directors on Hovnanian Enterprises Inc’s (HOV.N) compensation committee because of the chief executive’s high compensation relative to that at peer companies.
CEO Ara Hovnanian’s average three-year compensation is 290 percent above the median paid to chief executives at peer companies, Proxy Governance wrote in its report.
>>>read entire article at Reuters.com
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Labor fight threatens cred
A worried labor activist sends over an editorial from Pensions & Investments that uses the civil war within UNITE HERE to suggest hypocrisy in labor role in the shareholder rights movement, in which union pension funds have been at the forefront in pushing for governance reform.
The prize in the union fight has been the Amalgamated Bank, which is controlled by UNITE. And in the heat of the battle, Raynor moved to ensure that he and his allies would control the bank, even if they lose control of the union.
Raynor’s defense: “Corporate governance is not ‘one size fits all.”
>>>read entire article at Politico.com
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Tags: corporate governance, Middle East, OFCCP
