When the Criminal Becomes a Compliance Leader

May 8, 2008 | Filed Under Criminal Liability, Compliance 

The Financial Times management blog notes a different twist on the “do as I say, not as I do” bromide:

Students at Canada’s Richard Ivey School of Business will have an unusual guest speaker on Thursday: Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who served four years in prison after bringing down Barings Bank. Mr. Leeson will aid the students in a case study analysing the bank’s collapse, while giving tips on the safeguards needed to prevent similar debacles. Afterwards, the students will take part in the “Ivey Ring Tradition Ceremony”, in which they pledge “to act ethically and honestly in all their activities”.

The school’s press release touts the benefits of business-barons-to-be of listening to Mr. Leeson:

For future business leaders, it’s important not to just focus on success, but to also hear how people get themselves into trouble. Mr. Leeson will also highlight the importance for all businesses of integrating financial oversight into an enterprise-wide system that supports and promotes ethical behaviour.

Having a criminal lead a compliance case study is one way to teach a lesson; part of the message here could be that crime does pay eventually, as Mr. Leeson gets $15,000 or so for talks such as this.

It’s not clear whether Mr. Leeson will hand out the Ivey Rings; we have obtained closed-circuit camera footage of the ring Mr. Leeson wore around the time of the Barings collapse:

Frodo Lives!

Hostile Takeover Reality

May 4, 2008 | Filed Under Deals 

So Microsoft walks away from Yahoo.

My take: there’s a reason you rarely see large-scale hostile takeovers in the tech world. The real assets don’t just walk out the door every day, but you need most of their hearts and all of their minds to compete.

Rather like big law firm mergers?

Three other notable perspectives:

– Former O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini lawyer (and current Time 100 man) Michael Arrington speculates that Steve Ballmer may be angling for a better deal. (I doubt it).

– Steven Davidoff agrees with Arrington that Microsoft may be back later (and his commenter #2 agrees with me that hostile is hard in Silicon Valley).

– Kara Swisher gives a look through the prism of a classic TV show, and shows why the potentially combined company never really had a chance.