Peter Galuszka is a Virginia-based journalist with more than three decades of experience. He spent 15 years at BusinessWeek where he was twice Moscow Bureau Chief and International News Editor in New York. He has also worked at other national and regional business magazines and at newspapers. Now a Washington...
There was Microsoft. Then Carl Ichan. Then the vindication at a shareholders meeting. Isn't it time for Yahoo to get a break? Apparently, not. It now turns out that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock did not get the resounding affirmation rates of of 85.4...
Last weekend, I had to feel salt water. In my case, that means a short drive down to the Hampton Roads, Va. area where I get the extra benefit of seeing the big container ships roll in with their cargoes of cars, white goods, T shirts and place mats. I...
A new accounting system that most of the world is shifting to isn't that hard or costly to implement but it does have its little quirks. That seemed to be the consensus today at a roundtable discussion at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission which is expected...
A few days ago, I penned a posting asking that, at the end of the day, do proxy fights matter? I pointed to a new Wharton School of Business report that dumps cold water on the enthusiasm of shareholder activists who have had a field day this...
When tough times come, too many CEOs knee jerk themselves into cost-cutting mode. Big mistake, write two Booz & Co. consultants. What's needed instead is a smart, targeted investment strategy, say Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand in a recent Booz report. By making an intelligent study of...
At the end of the day, does it matter? That sounds like the kind of existential question my teen-aged daughters might ask, but a new Wharton School of Business report dumps cold water on the enthusiasm of shareholder activists who have had a field day this past...
Let's say you're the CEO of a company. A competitor or disgruntled ex-employee posts nasty and inaccurate information on a blog that your company website operates. Are you under any regulatory obligation to correct it? No, you are not. At least that's what the staff of the...
One of the books on my summer reading desk is a page-turner about the mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin back in 1905. After taking over by force, more than 700 sailors roamed the Black Sea spreading terror for nearly two weeks. What caused the mutiny? Cheap pursers aboard the...
The cold war among proxy service companies has been getting a lot hotter lately. Proxy Governance, a proxy service firm based in Vienna, Va., has gone on the offensive by pushing for a "code of ethics" among its group which includes Glass Lewis & Company and Egan...
Online communities can serve as a corporation's R&D lab by offering a broader talent reach and closer contact with consumers' needs, according to a new McKinsey Quarterly study. Historically, innovation has started in in-house labs where researchers must proceed through a series of closely-managed steps, write McKinsey...
All of you Lou Dobbs fans out there might be curious about what happened to one of the greatest travesties in American economic history -- a proxy fight by an English hedge fund over board seats on CSX, an American railroad. Apparently, The Children's Investment Fund, the...
While gaining among corporations in general, "Say on Pay" support is losing favor among financial companies, according to a new report by The Corporate Library. The shareholder watchdog group notes that "Say on Pay" lost support among eight major financial firms during this proxy season. The list...
The reach for non-U.S. director and executive talent continues. More companies based in the U.S or elsewhere are diversifying their C-suites and boardrooms with non-Americans and are looking increasingly to India and China for fresh blood. That's the trend noted by BusinessWeek and America.gov. ...
After six years of survival, could a constitutional technicality derail the far-reaching Sarbanes-Oxley Act? At issue is a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. that challenges the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The PCAOB was set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley...
Wall Street is coming on strong for Barack Obama in this year's presidential campaign donation race. Big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan favor Obama over John McCain by margins of roughly four or five to one. So states a recent report by Chief...
Do you think the nation's top securities regulator goes overboard in enforcement? One of its outgoing commissioners thinks it does. U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission member Paul Atkins recently co-wrote an article claiming that enforcement issues are so egregious that the SEC needs to set up an...
Generally speaking, finding talent for a business is a bit easier than finding capital or innovative ideas. But if you do business in China the opposite is true, according to McKinsey Quarterly in a new report. McKinsey researchers Kevin Lane and Florian Pollner note that China's typically...
BNET columnist Jessica Stillman penned an intriguing post last week calling a new Stanford study noting the dubious claims of shareholder advisory services that they can predict future performance of companies. The report, issued by the Rock Center for Corporate Governance, run jointly by Stanford law and graduate business schools,...
In the first two installments of this three-part series, I talked about the birth of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and about how it spread fear and loathing among business leaders in the U.S. Flash forward to today. Having taken effect nearly six years ago, SOX has settled in. Was it...
By 2005, it was clear that Sarbanes-Oxley wasn't exactly popular. SOX was being blamed for everything from putting companies out of business to forcing foreign firms to seek capital in non-U.S. markets. The most serious and believable criticisms surrounded SOX's notorious Section 404 which called for internal...
Peter Galuszka is a Virginia-based journalist with more than three decades of experience. He spent 15 years at BusinessWeek where he was twice Moscow Bureau Chief and International News Editor in New York. He has also worked at other national and regional business magazines and at newspapers. Now a Washington...
