Corporate avaritia has not too lang syne dominated the headlines inside the United States. The record of fallen and ashamed Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers is extended and alarming, and the tales rising from the dust of main firms are fairly disturbing.
How did this all come to cross?
What had been the causes?
Who failing to steer?
What occur to educating ethics?
Ethics is now being taught inside the lecture suite inside the Graduate Schools of Business all through American and now the world. It is just insufficient and a really late. The paradox is at those self same Graduate Schools of Business, is that lower than 20 years in the past the MBA lessons had been hearing to and perusing all the advantages, government "perks," methods of the boardroom, and the tales of "big bucks", battle tales of company raiders, merger and acquisition mega-millionaire and billionaires, and king's ransom "golden parachutes."
It mustn't shock anybody that having Ivan Bosky bragging about his profitable offers that they had been making a scarceness of ethical motive advantage and coveting all of the toys and "perks." The world of the immoral world of grasping CEO is stuffed with 100 foot yachts, 10,000 sq. ft properties with lawn tennis courts, media suite, and ten car garages, iniquity and affairs, acceptable objective for a senior government, hoped-for conduct, and obligatory for all profitable CEO's.
For the Ivan Bosky to be invited to ship a serious lecture to all of the MBA college students of probably the most prestigious Graduate Schools of Business with the unbelievable message: "GREED IS GOOD!" is beyong perception in an establishment of upper perusing. Universities are speculated to develop are leadership, not our blunders.
It is as unhappy notwithstandin telling touch upon the state of our collective lack of ethical wholeness which the favored film, WALL STREET, had actor Michael Douglas, as Corporate Raider Gordon Geeko, which he portraited as a moneyed magnate of trade. In the film, Gordon Geeko is offered as a robust deal maker with no ethical motive. Geeko inside the film makes use of precise quotes and shut paraphrases the quickly to be indicted, fined, and captive Ivan Bosky message "GREED IS GOOD!" It could be very unhappy remark that that very same message was delivered to the world and all of the hopeful workers who now knew that it was OK to steal, lie, and cheat!
The occasions of the final ten years reveal a material flaw inside the ethical material of some beforehand well-respected company leadership. The ever-present stress of the following quarter's earnings, and the push to extend "earnings per share" and drive up the inventory worth have evoked some senior executives of American corporations to disregard the basic ethical motive of honesty, particularly if the information is unhealthy. Unfortunately, among the company executives started to imagine their very own press kits, misplaced their ethical compasses, and fell victims to the sickness of company avaritia. All of the executives whose conduct is delineated above have did not show "moral virtue" or stay a life in line with fundamental honesty, the easy fundamental legal guidelines of the Old Testament's, "Ten Commandments."
Just as we hopefully elevate our mortalal youngsters by these three nice academics, "example, example, and example," we should demand that our leadership and different key position fashions present the "right example." Moral advantage has been sadly missing in these high executives in main American in public listed firms. In order to construct belief, Americans should require that our company and political leadership show by each motion, thought, and deed that they stand for honesty and wholeness. The leadership delineated above did not be reliable. These fallen government have incontestable failing management.
Let's stroll by the current company crime scene and the outcomes of preaching inside the Ivy Halls inside the MBA lecture suite that in actual fact making a living some the price to different and that "Greed is Good!" to the MBA college students and full the world that has unfolded from educating the "Seeds of Greed." The mixed losings from company fraud, company avaritia, job losings, and Federal Government bailouts are climbing daily into the handfuls of Trillions of Dollar.
The totals exclusively proceed to develop, and the commercial enterprise issues they create materially adversely impact the soundness of the inventory market. The true calamity is the devastation to thousands and thousands of particular mortal traders' finances and the non-public havoc to the staff who lose not exclusively their jobs notwithstandin their retreat all on the identical time.
Even the guard dog New York Stock Exchange (NTSE) has had a scandal. Retiring Chairman Dick Grasso's ill-famed multi-million banker's bill retreat bundle, commissioned by the NYSE Board of Directors, appalled everybody when the over $139.5 million payout bundle deal grew to become public information.
The senior executives at Enron have turn into an icon of company avaritia, large fraud, dishonesty, unethical conduct, and failing management. Andrew and Lea Fastow have fallen from grace, plea bargained, and have been guilty. Andrew, Enron's former CFO, will start to start out his 10-year sentence for securities and wire fraud as quickly as his multi-millionaire inheritress spouse, Lea, completes her one-year jail period of time for insider buying and merchandising of Enron inventory in her house charity. Lea Fastow, together with Enron senior executives Kenneth Lay, the (now deceased) founder and former Chairman of Enron, Jeffery Skilling, the previous President and CEO of Enron, and Richard Causey, Chief Accounting Officer of Enron, all denied any wrongdoing. The juries have tried them and set them responsible, responsible and responsible.
Enron's Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, and Richard Causey all arrogantly refused to plea discount with federal prosecutors, or admit their guilt. All three of them are actually tried and guilty on a wide range of felony prices together with securities fraud, graft, collusion and conspiracy to commit fraud, wire fraud, submitting false medium of exchange statements, and lots of extra. In addition to the felony prices pending, there are civil lawsuits from traders and workers who've misplaced billions inside the fall of Enron.
The late Kenneth Lay continued to proclaim his innocence of any felony acts at Enron, even after his conviction. He furthermore claimed that he, the founder and former Chairman of Enron, was unaware of the Enron medium of exchange particulars. Yet earlier than the United States Senate Committee Lay as a substitute of testifying he took "the Fifth" The conclusion should be drawn that Lay is aware of he's responsible of a number of felony acts. He was clearly not prepared to confess his guilt earlier than the United States Senate Committee.
Enron is, sadly, simply a part of the extended record of company avaritia plaguing America inside the 21st Century. Bernard Ebbers, former CEO of [MCI] WorldCom Inc., was indicted and guilty on prices of conspiracy, securities fraud, and making false restrictive filings. The Prosecutors aver and it was expeditiously confirmed to the jury that Ebber's was the ring chief in an $11 billion accounting fraud."
Flamboyant and extravagant former CEO of Tyco International Ltd. L. Dennis Kozlowski and his ex-Chief Financial Officer Mark Swartz are both about to head back to Federal Court for a retrial. Kozlowski has been dubbed the poster boy for corporate excess. He was guilty on a number of criminal charges including stealing $600 million from Tyco Corporation, and it's shareholders..
Kozlowski's exploits with women and wild outlay are all elaborate in the book, Testosterone Inc: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild (Byron, 2004). He portrays Kozlowski, on with Jack Welsh, former Chairman of General Electric, "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap of Sunbeam, and Revlon's Ron Pearlman, as having feet of clay and the ethical motive of rock stars - drunk on power and driven by sex, avaritia, extravagance, and glamour.
Richard Scrushy, founder and former Chief Executive Officer of HealthSouth Corp, is other in the list of CEOs who deny any wrongdoing. He was clean-handed on the criminal charges of commercial enterprise improprieties. But, William Owens, former Chief Financial Officer of HealthSouth, and four other HealthSouth former CFOs have all plead guilty.
Scrushy was accused of portion hyperbolize the company's earnings by nearly $3 billion from 1996 to 2003. Scrushy was indicted by a federal grand jury on 85 counts of fraud, money laundering, and other offenses. He pale-faced 650 years in prison and $36 million in fines on those charges.
At Scrushy's trial, Leif Murphy, a former HealthSouth Vice President, who worked in the firm's Treasury Department and is not charged with a crime, provided damaging testimonial about Scrushy. Murphy testified that Scrushy had gotten very angry and Scrushy had shouted at Murphy when Leif Murphy challenged Scrushy on the release of false commercial enterprise information. Not withstanding the fact that Scrushy's string of four Chief Financial Officers where guilty or plead guilt, Scrushy was found not guilt of all criminal charges.
The government also was quest $278 million in forfeitures from Scrushy, who has declared "I'm an harmless man" many times, including in his interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" on October 26, 2003. His lawyers somehow managed to get him off on these criminal charges cognate major fraud at HealthSouth, only have Richard Scrushy get guilty on charges manifold counts of graft and his now in prison.
At Fannie Mae, the career of well-respected CEO Franklin Raines came to an abrupt end when the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight forced a very resistant Fannie Mae Board of Directors to oust Raines. Raines, Fannie Mae's Board, and his supporters insisted that he wasn't blameful for the misuse of obscure accounting standards. But his friend thoughts were rejected and his testimonial was not accepted as the full truth by the SEC, the U. S. Congress, or the public.
Raines rose from being a poor kid from Seattle to graduate from Harvard, earn a Rhodes scholarship, and becoming White House Budget Director, before being abroach to be the CEO of Fannie Mae. Now Raines' remunerative severance package ("early retreat") has become a new issue of contention. There have been well documented cases of massive fraud, mismanagement, and accounting mistakes at Fannie Mae during Raines' tenure as CEO.
While Raines has ne'er been guilty of perpetrating or approving the fallacious accounting, there was a major uproar over his severance package when the news poor that he had apparently been negligent in overseeing accounting functions at Fannie Mae. Yet somehow amazingly, the then fallen and pillaged Franklin Raines (after the US Government took over and bailed out Fannie Mae) became a "medium of exchange advisor" to then US Presidential Candidate, US Senator Barrack H. Obama,
In this post-Enron, post-WorldCom, and post-Tyco world, the rules are being enforced on the acting W. C. Fields of corporate America. Even one of the largest and most profitable insurance companies in the world, American International Group Inc. (AIG), has had a serious bout with both the Securities & Exchange Commission and the U. S. Justice Department, starting back several years ago.
The commercial enterprise problems and fraud at AIG really began in 2001 (or possibly even earlier), but took three years for SEC securities regulators to catch it. In 2004, the SEC educated AIG that it was exploring filing securities fraud charges against it for their non arms length relationship with PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and what the SEC call a pattern of portion PNC hide their underperforming loans, starting clear back in at to the last degree 2001.
The full impact of the seeds of avaritia sown earlier this decade and sequent misdeeds have resulted in the major disaster at AIG, which has now been disclosed in 2008 and 2009. Now, the failing of AIG has resulted in the Federal Government Bailout is costing American's Billions and Billions of Taxpayer Dollars.
The list of the indicted and fallen corporate leadership is long and growing. In August of 2003 it was reported that story of the misdeeds of Adlephia's John Rigas, and two of his sons failing came to light. They were indicted and guilty of defrauding Adlephia Communications Corp. of $2.5 billion.
One of the lessons that these leadership should have learned and lived was basic ethics or ethical motive. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 [H. R. 3763], passed by the United States Congress on January 23, 2003 and now signed into law by President George W. Bush.
From a basic moral, possibly even a religious perspective, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act would not have been necessary if corporate executives had just lived the "Ten Commandments," or at to the last degree just three of them: "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not bear false witness."
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