Management and Leadership - Mary Schapiro

During the time of the scandal, which broke in mid-2005, PBS&J had 4,000 employees in 75 offices in 24 states (Barnett, 2007). A number of high-profile projects were under construction with FDOT, OOCEA, and TxDOT. The funds from these projects were being brought into the firm at a rapid rate; however, PBS&J contained a flimsy internal controls system which facilitated the embezzlement that eventually took place. The major players of the scandal were located in the firm’s Miami office. They were Scott DeLoach, then chief financial officer (CFO); Maria Garcia, an accounting employee who was in charge of the office’s database and bank reconciliations; and Rosario Licata, a bookkeeper who maintained the firm’s benefits bank account (Eubanks, 2016).

This scandal was unique in itself as it shook the foundation of the sacrosanct $2.2 trillion government securities market which was considered too big to rig. The conventional wisdom was shaken to a great extent and regulations tightened for all the 40 primary designated dealers of T-bills and government bonds.

When we think about what a leader and manager is, most of us will use the same meaning. But in actual fact this is incorrect. We have to look at these two terms differently. What is a manager? A manager is someone who is responsible for directing and controlling the work and staff of a business, or of a department within the organization. So what is a leader? A leader is someone whom people follow, somebody who guides or directs others. Looking at both terms they both are very different. The question is always asked is a manager can be a leader and leader a manager. The true answer is managers are not always leaders, while leaders can be

The criminal complaint, filed in federal court in New York, offers the clearest view yet of one of the biggest cases of alleged insider dealing ever. In its lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the Commission alleges that the defendants violated the antifraud, periodic reporting, record keeping, and internal controls

Following a number of discovered fraud scandals committed by well-known corporations and in order to restore public confidence in the stock market and trading of securities, the United States congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the year 2002. As a result of the act endorsement by the New York Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission, among many other national overseeing committees, a number of rules and regulations were proposed and adopted and that demanded new processes and programs be instilled for ensuring compliance with the requirements of the new law. The new rules and regulations pertaining to the enacted law have a common goal:

This book brought out the failures of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in America’s history, as orchestrated by Bernie Madoff. Harry Markopolos caught up with Madoff’s Ponzi scheme earlier on in his career and saw all the red flags. There was no explanation of the continuous one percent yield in over forty five stocks that Madoff dealt with. Madoff took advantage of the laxity by the SEC officials in failing to follow up complains with an investigation, and the trust

This paper is a critical analysis of the article “Spirituality as a Predictive Factor for Signing an Organ Donor Card”. The research was preformed by Anat Peles Bortz, RN, PhD, Tamar Ashkenazi, RN,PhD, and Semyon Melnikov, RN, PhD. The research was accepted for publication in 2014. The research was presented at the 25th International Nursing Research Congress Symposium in 2014 in Hong Kong. The research appears in Sigma Theta Tau International, Journal of Nursing Scholarship 2015. The research looked at two groups of people in Israel, those who signed an organ donor card

Enron – Enron is partially responsible for the crisis of confidence, because they committed the fraud via the special purpose entities. Because of the three percent rule, Enron was able to put lots of its liabilities onto those off-balance sheet entities. Also, Enron did not have adequate financial statement disclosures. Many of the top employees at Enron were able to “realize” an extraordinary profit within matters of a couple months because of the fraud. Additionally, Enron abused the mark-to-market accounting method for its long-term contracts. All of these fraudulent activities caused Enron’s profits to be overinflated.

It is very clear that Bernard Madoff’s corporate governance wasn’t effective at all. They didn’t have any governance mechanism for identifying risks and for planning for recovery when mistakes or problems occurred.

stood accused of in a series of scandals that nally came to a head in the largest bankruptcy

To combat this assumption it turns out large amounts of money of the value of $300million was invested in Bernard Madoff accounts in the form of pension funds. Some officials knew that the unscathed performance of Madoff securities were too good to be true as their prices consistently climbed up in spite the financial crisis. However, still they pawned its own shareholders’ funds with the hopes of jumping on the same band wagon as Madoff and reaping further profits. Another angle at probing the case was that the CEO, directors as well as executives were only looking out for themselves. Evidently they had direct benefits in the form of handsome compensation packages for retaining high profile clients such as Madoff and Wise which

The Securities Exchange Commision; also known as the SEC or the watchdogs of wall street, has many purposes to having established its government department. As first time investors turn to the markets seeking to secure their futures or even just financial growth, the SEC’s Investor protection mission becomes fascinating. Ironically, the stock itself isn't the only risky factor in today's marketplace. As the SEC oversees key participants in the securities world; their mission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation.

Bernard Madoff had full control of the organizational leadership of Bernard Madoff Investments Securities LLC. Madoff used charisma to convince his friends, members of elite groups, and his employees to believe in him. He tricked his clients into believing that they were investing in something special. He would often turn potential investors down, which helped Bernard in targeting the investors with more money to invest. Bernard Madoff created a system which promised high returns in the short term and was nothing but the Ponzi scheme. The system’s idea relied on funds from the new investors to pay misrepresented and extremely high returns to existing investors. He was doing this for years; convincing wealthy individuals and charities to

The mission of FASB is to “improve reporting, focus on traits that are important and reliable and on quality of comparison and consistency, to keep up to date with current trends to reflect modifications in methods used and economic changes, and to improve the common understanding of the purpose and content within financial report” (FASB, 2008). The FASB has an obligation to uphold ethical standards as well as to ensure rules and regulations are followed in the way of financial reporting. The FASB uses input from other agencies when developing or amending standards such as the SEC. Before the Great Crash of 1929, little was done to regulate the securities market (SEC, 2008). Two laws were created to help improve investor confidence: “Securities Act of 1933 and Securities Exchange Act of 1934” (SEC, 2008). According to SEC (2008) the purpose of these laws is to make sure companies display accurate data about their financial accounts, the securities that are sold and involved risks and for the brokers who sell and trade to treat investors with respect by being fair and honest. A more recent law signed in by President Bush in 2002, was the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002” (SEC, 2008). This act created changes in improving responsibility, disclosures and

The illegal construction of the Bernie Madoff securities pyramid scheme grew to preposterous proportions from legal, auditing, and regulatory weaknesses of the Securities Exchange Commission, the designated regulatory body of the U.S. financial markets. The required expertise, authority, and relevant penalties needed to deter management from committing ethical breaches lacked substance in the case study of BMIS (Crews 11). Even after the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals that occurred in the early 2000s, the SEC unexplainably revoked provisions created to help avoid fraud. The provision the SEC revoked specifically mandated firms structured like Madoff’s to be audited by accounting firms registered and audited by the Board. By revoking the provision, BMIS was allowed to continue its Ponzi scheme for another half a decade with the aid of utilizing an unregistered, small accounting firm called Freihling & Horowitz (“Madoff’s Jenga”