Chevron raised its bid for Unocal to $63.01 per share, compared with CNOOC’s bid worth $65.50. Unocal directors approved the Chevron bid, as Chevron’s bid is favored by the U.S. government and faces less regulatory harassment. Chevron has been lobbying intensely to raise the expense and political risk of CNOOC’s bid. It employed Wayne Berman, a
Michael Oxley, Republican co-author of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, admitted during a London conference that the law “was not a perfect document” and that some of it was “excessive.” He complained that after WorldCom collapsed, “it was difficult to legislate responsibly in that type of hot-house atmosphere.” He added: “But I am proud of the bill.”
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was supposed to enhance corporate governance, but the law is diluting the quality of the boards of directors which are responsible for governance. In a Grant Thornton LLP survey , 65% of senior financial executives of public companies say it is more difficult to recruit corporate directors due to fears about director
Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) proposed a protectionist amendment to energy legislation that is designed to derail CNOOC Ltd’s acquisition of Unocal. Pombo’s proposal “would require the Energy Department to identify all of the energy assets China has sought to invest in [and] review whether China’s investments in energy assets have been done on
The $1.4 billion Wall Street research settlement, devised by New York politician Eliot Spitzer, compels investment banks to pay their “independent” rivals to publish competing investment research reports. This is necessary, Spitzer argued, to give investors access to research that is not tainted by conflict of interest. Banking conflicts, he said,
The National Association of Evangelicals is considering a federal lobbying effort promoting government action against global warming. Top officials of the group have decided that the Bible mandates responsible stewardship of the Earth, energy use is causing catastrophic global climate change, and therefore the government should be given more power
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed into law after the Andersen case was filed, gives the feds the powers they improperly used against Andersen. “in real terms, the opinion likely won’t change much in the way business does business in the post-Enron era. “If you’re a corporate defendant, you still have to make a deal with [New York Attorney General]
SEC chairman William Donaldson resigned his post only days after two highly embarassing scandals were revealed at the agency that enforces the nation’s accounting rules. The Government Accountability Office conducted an audit of the agency and found three material weaknesses in its internal controls . The weaknesses related to its recording of
In a major legal defeat for NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer, Bank of America broker Ted Sihpol was acquitted of charges that he illegally helped a New Jersey hedge fund trade in mutual funds after the stock market had closed. Sihpol was the only individual charged by Spitzer in the so-called late trading scandal. The verdict is further evidence
A new company is being formed by the Nasdaq and Reuters to provide stock research for nearly 700 companies that currently lack research coverage by any major brokerage firm on Wall Street. Why do brokerage firms not cover these companies? Since the Wall Street research settlement engineered by Eliot Spitzer, brokerage firms were forced to scale
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.