Still Searching for Signs of Life on the Bear Stearns Board

May 4, 2010

Corporate governance at the failed Wall Street giant had all the hallmarks of a disengaged boardroom stacked with cronies and dominated by insiders. Finally, Congress can shed some light on where the board was at Bear Stearns — or if it existed at all. Former Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne will be making a rare [...]

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Goldman’s Exhibits of Wall Street Insincerity

April 28, 2010

Collectively, in their pivotal appearance before Congress, Goldman’s top performers could not muster the sincerity, transparency or gravitas of a used car salesman.  It is unlikely to play well on Main Street. Nothing illustrates the folly and arrogance of Wall Street more than the appearance of the Goldman Sachs executives who testified yesterday before the [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Alice in Boardland and Other Fairy Tales About Lehman Brothers

April 23, 2010

Leonard Lance, (R.NJ): Mr. Cruikshank, to follow up in your remarks.   Do you believe there were corporate governance failures at Lehman? Thomas Cruikshank, Chairman, Lehman board auit committee: No, I don’t. I think our governance procedures were really very, very good. House Committee on Financial Services, April 20, 2010 A number of revealing facts emerged from [...]

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Goldman’s Kryptonite?

April 19, 2010

How is it Goldman felt it necessary to warn shareholders that enforcement actions can have a negative impact upon the company’s business in the abstract, but apparently felt no need to reveal the material fact that it had been formally alerted by the SEC to an investigation? In the greatest financial meltdown since the 1930s, [...]

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Coming Next: The Monetization of Failure

April 14, 2010

How overpaid CEOs and directors are imperilling responsible capitalism and the millions who depend upon it.

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Massey’s Board Key to Safety Questions

April 13, 2010

With the tragic news that there were no survivors of the explosion at the Massey Energy coal mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, and all 29 miners were lost, attention will soon turn to the causes of the disaster.  The company’s board of directors should not be permitted to escape scrutiny in that regard or to [...]

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Massey Mining Disaster Shows How Not to Handle a Crisis

April 6, 2010

More than 20 hours since the horrific explosion that killed 25 and has left others missing at the Massey Energy mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, the company’s web site still shows a photo of a smiling vice president of safety and training, and boasts that 2009 was another “record setting year for safety.” It is [...]

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Apple at a High Point in its Stock But Not in its Corporate Governance

March 26, 2010

It would be foolish to conclude that Apple’s glowing status today is due in part to its anomalous boardroom style, or that there will never be a time when its directors will need to be fully engaged to deal with a real crisis.  They are ill-prepared for that eventuality. The Wall Street Journal had an [...]

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It’s Morning in a Healthier America

March 23, 2010

The day health care reform and universal coverage moved from a noble dream to the law of the land. Every few decades, America takes a momentous turn in reaffirming what it stands for and how it treats its citizens.  This happened with the enactment of Social Security in the 1930s and with Medicare and the [...]

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