Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

Environmental compliance has been an important issue for large, multi-national companies for many years, and in recent years it has taken on added importance for their suppliers. Case in point: Walmart, Procter & Gamble, IBM – many Fortune 500 companies – are requiring that their vendors audit and quantify the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in their supply chains. Indeed, many of these high-profile organizations have undertaken ambitious plans for reducing their carbon footprint. (A big driver of this activity is stronger environmental regulation and pressure from environmental organizations, customers, investors and the like.) For example, in early 2010 Walmart announced a goal to eliminate 20 million metric tons of GHG emissions from its global supply chain by the end of 2015. Procter & Gamble has the stated objective of generating 100% of its energy from renewable resources – with a target of generating 25% of that by 2020.

Does your organization ever conduct internal investigations to evaluate complaints about working conditions, claims of harassment or other inappropriate behavior, or concerns about individual, or group, law-breaking? If so, investigators probably try to keep the investigation confidential, in order to avoid internal embarrassment while preserving the status quo until the investigation reaches its conclusion.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) administers a broad range of consumer protection statutes, primarily by issuing “guidelines” for organizations to follow when they design products, packages and advertising materials. Generally these guidelines are not directly enforceable, but FTC uses them as the basis for deciding whether a particular activity is lawful. FTC provides organizations that conform to the guidelines with a “safe harbor” against prosecution for violation of one of its statutes, and focuses enforcement on businesses that fail to conform.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) was created by the U.S. Congress as a result of passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Some believe that the PCAOB has been sleeping, because its recent activity has not been very visible. But as discussed below, the board is addressing many complex and sometimes highly controversial changes to the auditing profession.

A picture may be worth a thousand words. But words – or lack thereof – can be worth millions. Never more so than when courts are deciding the level of coverage and the amount of payout policyholders are entitled to from insurance companies. So, when it comes to understanding insurance law you need to make sure you understand rule number one: words rule.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) establishes national standards that employers must meet in order to protect workers. Employers who fail to meet OSHA audit and compliance requirements are subject to enforcement actions by OSHA or delegated state agencies. Employers who perform the worst can be subject to OSHA’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP), established in 2010 as the latest in a series of enhanced enforcement programs for those employers that OSHA considers the most dangerous and/or recalcitrant. SVEP has always offered the possibility that an employer can demonstrate its rehabilitation and exit the program, and just last month OSHA finally published clear guidelines for doing so.

This month the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published new environmental compliance rules (Rule 13q-1 and associated Form SD), requiring annual disclosures by publicly listed “resource extraction issuers” of payments they make to the U.S. federal government, or foreign governments, related to commercial development of oil, natural gas or minerals. SEC’s rules implement a Congressional mandate contained in 2010’s massive Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank).

It has been more than two years since the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued their joint proposal on lease accounting. In fact, the proposal was issued on August 17, 2010, and the boards were seeking comments on their proposal by December 15 of that year.

Environmental compliance can be a complex business.  In fact, in certain situations, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and other legislation, may actually deter use of innovative waste management technologies and best practices. Here are three questions to ask about your organization:

I find that, because I run my own practice, I spend a lot of time networking, meeting people and learning. One of the “hot topics” of conversation I often encounter is “branding”, and how everyone wants to establish, and use, their new brands consistently on social media and in other avenues.