Resisting Corporate Corruption. Cases in Practical Ethics From Enron Through The Financial Crisis

Resisting Corporate Corruption teaches business ethics in a manner very different from the philosophical and legal frameworks that dominate graduate schools. The book offers twenty-eight case studies and nine essays that cover a full range of business practice, controls and ethics issues. The essays discuss the nature of sound financial controls, root causes of the Financial Crisis, and the evolving nature of whistleblower protections. The cases are framed to instruct students in early identification of ethics problems and how to work such issues within corporate organizations. They also provide would-be whistleblowers with instruction on the challenges they’d face, plus information on the legal protections, and outside supports available should they embark on that course. Some of the cases illustrate how ‘The Young are the Most Vulnerable,’ i.e. short service employees are most at risk of being sacrificed by an unethical firm. Other cases show the ethical dilemmas facing well-known CEOs and the alternatives they can employ to better combine ethical conduct and sound business strategy. Through these case studies, students should emerge with a practical toolkit that better enables them to follow their moral compass. Finally, the cases provide an in depth look at how a corporation becomes progressively corrupted (Enron), how the Financial Crisis was rooted in ethical decay at institutions as diverse as Countrywide, Goldman Sacks, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Moody’s, and at the ethical challenges that persist in the post-Crisis, post-Dodd-Frank environment.

The world's best financial minds help us understand today's financial crisis With so much information saturating the market for the everyday investor, trying to understand why the economic crisis happened and what needs to be done to fix it can be daunting. There is a real need, and demand, from both investors and the financial community to obtain answers as to what really happened and why. Lessons from the Financial Crisis brings together the leading minds in the worlds of finance and academia to dissect the crisis. Divided into three comprehensive sections-The Subprime Crisis; The Global Financial Crisis; and Law, Regulation, the Financial Crisis, and The Future-this book puts the events that have transpired in perspective, and offers valuable insights into what we must do to avoid future missteps. Each section is comprised of chapters written by experienced contributors, each with his or her own point of view, research, and conclusions Examines the market collapse in detail and explores safeguards to stop future crises Encompasses the most up-to-date analysis from today's leading financial minds We currently face a serious economic crisis, but in understanding it, we can overcome the challenges it presents. This well-rounded resource offers the best chance to get through the current situation and learn from our mistakes.

Corporate Resiliency: Managing the Growing Risk of Fraud and Corruption is written for members of boards of directors and audit committees, senior executives, those who advise or report to them, and those responsible for managing fraud and corruption risks. It describes in plain English terms a proactive fraud and corruption risk management process that can enhance corporate resiliency. The authors provide practical insights and highlight traps to avoid. Quotes from their interviews of business executives provide international perspectives regarding changes in fraud and corruption risks and techniques companies are adopting to deal with them.

In Practical Financial Optimization: A Library of GAMS Models, the authors provide a diverse set of models for portfolio optimization, based on the General Algebraic Modelling System. ‘GAMS’ consists of a language which allows a high-level, algebraic representation of mathematical models and a set of solvers – numerical algorithms – to solve them. The system was developed in response to the need for powerful and flexible front-end tools to manage large, real-life models. The work begins with an overview of the structure of the GAMS language, and discusses issues relating to the management of data in GAMS models. The authors provide models for mean-variance portfolio optimization which address the question of trading off the portfolio expected return against its risk. Fixed income portfolio optimization models perform standard calculations and allow the user to bootstrap a yield curve from bond prices. Dedication models allow for standard portfolio dedication with borrowing and re-investment decisions, and are extended to deal with maximisation of horizon return and to incorporate various practical considerations on the portfolio tradeability. Immunization models provide for the factor immunization of portfolios of treasury and corporate bonds. The scenario-based portfolio optimization problem is addressed with mean absolute deviation models, tracking models, regret models, conditional VaR models, expected utility maximization models and put/call efficient frontier models. The authors employ stochastic programming for dynamic portfolio optimization, developing stochastic dedication models as stochastic extensions of the fixed income models discussed in chapter 4. Two-stage and multi-stage stochastic programs extend the scenario models analysed in Chapter 5 to allow dynamic rebalancing of portfolios as time evolves and new information becomes known. Models for structuring index funds and hedging interest rate risk on international portfolios are also provided. The final chapter provides a set of ‘case studies’: models for large-scale applications of portfolio optimization, which can be used as the basis for the development of business support systems to suit any special requirements, including models for the management of participating insurance policies and personal asset allocation. The title will be a valuable guide for quantitative developers and analysts, portfolio and asset managers, investment strategists and advanced students of finance.

Real case studies on bribery and corruption written by expert fraud examiners Bribery and Corruption Casebook: The View from Under the Table is a one-of-a-kind collection of actual cases written by the fraud examiners who investigated them. These stories were hand-selected from hundreds of submissions and together form a comprehensive, enlightening and entertaining picture of the many types of bribery and corruption cases in varied industries throughout the world. Each case outlines how the bribe or corruption was engineered, how it was investigated, and how perpetrators were brought to justice Written for fraud investigators, auditors, compliance officers, and corporate lawyers Reflects the recent crackdown on bribery and prosecution of cases under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Also by Dr. Joseph T. Wells: Fraud Casebook, Principles of Fraud Examination, and Computer Fraud Casebook This book reveals the dangers of bribery and corruption and the measures that can be taken to prevent it from happening in the first place.

As a result of the global convergence of financial reporting standards, U.S. GAAP is changing profoundly. U.S. GAAP is also being abandoned by many public and private companies, and will eventually be replaced by a higher-quality set of global standards. The Convergence Guidebook for Corporate Financial Reporting provides the timely, practical guidance that CFOs, controllers, and other financial managers need in order to prepare for the impact of Convergence on their companies, departments, and careers. Guidebook readers will also learn why they must begin preparing for «the next big challenge in corporate financial reporting» now.

Corporate citizenship refers to the way a company integrates basic social values with everyday business practices, operations and policies. A corporate citizenship company understands that its own success is intertwined with societal health and well being. Therefore, it takes into account its impact on all stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, suppliers, and the natural environment. This handbook draws from the author?s experience crafting and implementing philanthropic and volunteer strategies with companies such as IBM, Exxon, Mobil, 3M, and General Mills. A step-by-step primer on creating a comprehensive corporate citizenship program, The Good Corporate Citizen lays out how companies can maximize this exciting new trend. Doris Rubenstein (Minneapolis, MN) has worked for over 25 years with some of America?s most respected nonprofit organizations.

A whole is worth the sum of its parts. Even the most complex structured bond, credit arbitrage strategy or hedge trade can be broken down into its component parts, and if we understand the elemental components, we can then value the whole as the sum of its parts. We can quantify the risk that is hedged and the risk that is left as the residual exposure. If we learn to view all financial trades and securities as engineered packages of building blocks, then we can analyze in which structures some parts may be cheap and some may be rich. It is this relative value arbitrage principle that drives all modern trading and investment. This book is an easy-to-understand guide to the complex world of today’s financial markets teaching you what money and capital markets are about through a sequence of arbitrage-based numerical illustrations and exercises enriched with institutional detail. Filled with insights and real life examples from the trading floor, it is essential reading for anyone starting out in trading. Using a unique structural approach to teaching the mechanics of financial markets, the book dissects markets into their common building blocks: spot (cash), forward/futures, and contingent (options) transactions. After explaining how each of these is valued and settled, it exploits the structural uniformity across all markets to introduce the difficult subjects of financially engineered products and complex derivatives. The book avoids stochastic calculus in favour of numeric cash flow calculations, present value tables, and diagrams, explaining options, swaps and credit derivatives without any use of differential equations.

The book that fills the practitioner need for a distillation of the most important tools and concepts of corporate finance In today's competitive business environment, companies must find innovative ways to enable rapid and sustainable growth not just to survive, but to thrive. Corporate Finance: A Practical Approach is designed to help financial analysts, executives, and investors achieve this goal with a practice-oriented distillation of the most important tools and concepts of corporate finance. Updated for a post-financial crisis environment, the Second Edition provides coverage of the most important issues surrounding modern corporate finance for the new global economy: Preserves the hallmark conciseness of the first edition while offering expanded coverage of key topics including dividend policy, share repurchases, and capital structure Current, real-world examples are integrated throughout the book to provide the reader with a concrete understanding of critical business growth concepts Explanations and examples are rigorous and global, but make minimal use of mathematics Each chapter presents learning objectives which highlight key material, helping the reader glean the most effective business advice possible Written by the experts at CFA Institute, the world's largest association of professional investment managers Created for current and aspiring financial professionals and investors alike, Corporate Finance focuses on the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to succeed in today's global corporate world.

A discussion-based learning approach to corporate finance fundamentals Lessons in Corporate Finance explains the fundamentals of the field in an intuitive way, using a unique Socratic question and answer approach. Written by award-winning professors at M.I.T. and Tufts, this book draws on years of research and teaching to deliver a truly interactive learning experience. Each case study is designed to facilitate class discussion, based on a series of increasingly detailed questions and answers that reinforce conceptual insights with numerical examples. Complete coverage of all areas of corporate finance includes capital structure and financing needs along with project and company valuation, with specific guidance on vital topics such as ratios and pro formas, dividends, debt maturity, asymmetric information, and more. Corporate finance is a complex field composed of a broad variety of sub-disciplines, each involving a specific skill set and nuanced body of knowledge. This text is designed to give you an intuitive understanding of the fundamentals to provide a solid foundation for more advanced study. Identify sources of funding and corporate capital structure Learn how managers increase the firm's value to shareholders Understand the tools and analysis methods used for allocation Explore the five methods of valuation with free cash flow to firm and equity Navigating the intricate operations of corporate finance requires a deep and instinctual understanding of the broad concepts and practical methods used every day. Interactive, discussion-based learning forces you to go beyond memorization and actually apply what you know, simultaneously developing your knowledge, skills, and instincts. Lessons in Corporate Finance provides a unique opportunity to go beyond traditional textbook study and gain skills that are useful in the field.