By Alicia Jessop, Contributor Drug testing of student-athletes may be taking a new turn. Earlier this spring, SEC school chancellors and presidents discussed a number of topics during the conference’s annual spring meetings. One idea that was reportedly been floated, is a conference-wide substance abuse policy. Currently, no conference has a conference-wide substance abuse policy in place to address recreational drug use by student-athletes. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
IBM is the subject of a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into how it reports revenue related to its cloud computing business, the vendor revealed Wednesday.
“In May 2013, IBM learned that the SEC is conducting an investigation into how IBM reports cloud revenue,” the company said in a filing with the SEC. “IBM is cooperating with the SEC in this matter.”
“IBM’s reporting of cloud revenue is the result of a rigorous and disciplined process,” IBM spokesman Ed Barbini said via email on Wednesday. “We are confident that the information we have provided has been consistently accurate.”
Further details of the investigation weren’t available.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Alicia Jessop, Contributor In a speech on the state of the Southeastern Conference on the first day of SEC Media Days, SEC commissioner Mike Slive not only boasted about the conference’s continued successes, but also made remarks calling for NCAA reform. Most interesting in his call for NCAA reform, perhaps, was his comments related to the structure of the NCAA’s Division I Board of Directors. In particular, Slive asked, “. . . What changes need to be made to the NCAA structure to provide significant roles for the stakeholders, the presidents, chancellors, athletic directors, institutional administrators, conference administrators and coaches? What is the proper role, function and composition and size of the NCAA Board of Directors?” …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Articles and rumors abound regarding where big time college sports programs are headed. By big time, I mean members of the five largest revenue producing conferences: ACC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 12, and SEC. The facts are that leaders from these conferences have met regarding redesigning their own governance. What exactly that will mean is where speculation and rumor abounds. The one clear message is that change is coming. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Microsoft revealed Tuesday that its actual revenue for the Surface tablet for the 2013 fiscal year was $863 million, less than the $900 million charged against its profits for discounting the Surface tablet.
Technically, that means that the amount that Microsoft discounted the Surface by was more than its actual revenue for the product. The 8-K document that Microsoft filed with the SEC also reveals that Microsoft spent $898 million more in advertising for Surface and Windows 8 than it did in its previous fiscal year, when sales of the Windows division were $18.4 billion. (In 2011, Windows sales totaled $19.1 billion, when Microsoft was riding high on Windows 7.)
A writedown means that the company reports a change in the so-called “book value” of a particular piece of inventory, a tacit acknowledgement that the market value of a particular good ha decreased. One way of looking at it might be to say that a loaf of bread might be worth $5 the day it was baked, but only $3 a day later. The hope is that writing down or discounting the item in question will prompt sales, as customers perceive the item to be more in line with what they would expect to pay.
To give it an air of freshness, Microsoft cut the price of the Surface tablet by 30 percent, which apparently prompted buyers to buy up the available supply at Walmart.com. But while the site still reports the Surface RT with 32 GB of memory as out of stock, local stores reported having them on their shelves, indicating that Walmart may not be as selling as many as first thought.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
On Dec. 5, Ohio State President Gordon Gee jokingly referred to “those damn Catholics” at a university Athletic Council meeting in the context of frustration he expressed about trying to negotiate with Notre Dame in years past over joining the Big Ten. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News
By William Pentland, Contributor
The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the July issue of RMEL’s Electric Energy magazine: If you want to take the temperature of an industry as large as the utility industry, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Committee’s (SEC) online database of shareholder reports is a great place to start. Under federal securities laws, publicly traded companies, including the vast majority of investor-owned utilities, are required to file quarterly and annual shareholder reports with the SEC. The utility industry’s ambivalence about distributed generation (DG) is a case in point. “Distributed generation” is one of many terms commonly used to describe generation facilities located close to the load, including solar photovoltaics, microturbines and so forth. Unlike the typical traditional utility-scale power plants, DG is connected directly to the distribution network—or connected through the customer’s meter. Historically, the term DG—or any of the half-dozen or so similar terms used to describe generation facilities located close to the load—seldom surfaced in SEC filings, other than those filed by companies pursuing niche market applications like backup power for remotely sited cell towers. Indeed, until recently, nearly all investor-owned utilities remained silent on the subject of DG’s potential impact on electric utilities. That silence began to give way to conflicting perspectives on DG’s potential impact on the industry over the past two or three years. In some filings, DG is described as a potential source of future competition that could adversely affect utilities. In other filings, DG is described as an emerging growth opportunity for utilities. While DG will likely create both risks and opportunities, the former possibility is attracting more attention than the latter. And this tendency exists beyond the rarified world of SEC filings. By allowing customers to displace power from the grid with electricity produced on-site, utilities are expressing concerns about declining demand and lost investment opportunity in supply and energy services: The middleman may get cut out. The full story, “Disintermediation: The Good, Bad and Ugly of Natural Gas,” is available here. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Earlier this month, Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial contender Narendra Modi ousted Congress minister Shashi Tharoor as the Indian politician with the most followers on Twitter. Modi is closing in on 2 million followers while Tharoor, who had long-reigned as the most popular, trails just behind. Modi’s presumed rival for the prime ministerial post, the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi is conspicuous by his nonexistence on Twitter. Modi and Gandhi are going head-to-head on Facebook where their fan pages are garnering a multitude of “likes”. As India’s general election nears, the colorful political rallies and raucous sloganeering is yet to begin. But the digital face-off between political parties and their leaders has already reached a shrill extreme. The main Congress and BJP have set up what are dubbed ‘digital war rooms’ and mandated that leaders get active on Twitter. Each party is mobilizing thousands of impassioned supporters on social networks. Even the newly-launched Aam Admi Party (Hindi for common man’s political party) of anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal is vociferous on social media. With even more frenetic social media activity forecast in the coming months, India’s upcoming general election is giving an inadvertent, huge boost for Twitter and Facebook. “Politics, and indeed democracy, is moving from the old model of one-way political rhetoric sans any real participation to an increasingly voluble, energetic, fractious, interactive engagement on social media,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of the Indian parliament, who formerly founded and then sold telecom operator BPL Mobile. “On social networks, politicians cannot hide from scrutiny and interactivity.” India has the third-largest base, after the United States and China, of internet users. In reality, the reach of the internet, and consequently social media, is limited, as its nearly 150 million users represent a fraction of the total population. Of these, however, two out of three users are said to access social networks daily. India is shaping up to be an important market for online advertising. Google currently leads in online revenues in India, followed by Facebook. India’s Twitter base, about 20 million users as per a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, is growing rapidly. Meanwhile Facebook said in a recent SEC filing that India and Brazil represent key growth regions in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the period a year ago. It reported 78 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India in the March quarter of 2013. India could boast of the world’s largest base of 277 million Facebook users by 2017. While social networks’ growth is slacking off in the West, populous countries such as Brazil, India and Russia offer plenty of growth room. Social media’s new relevance in Indian electoral politics is highlighted by the fact that the small population active on these networks is influential in urban constituencies. One study says that Facebook and Twitter could help decisively swing votes in 160 of India’s 543 parliamentary constituencies. That could be the change. In the past, India’s urban, educated voters have largely shied …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
A Texas man was charged on Tuesday in U.S. federal court with allegedly running a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, allegedly siphoning the virtual currency from victims to pay for rent, food and gambling.
Trendon T. Shavers of McKinney, Texas, ran the Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST), an investment scheme that promised 7 percent weekly returns from bitcoin trades intended to profit from market price differences in the virtual currency, according to a news release from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Instead, the 30-year-old Shavers, who went by the “Pirate” and “pirateat40,” on the popular Bitcoin Forum — is alleged to have used bitcoin investments from new investors to pay interest to early entrants to the scheme and cover withdrawals, the SEC said. He has been charged with violating parts of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Exchange Act Rule.
Shavers allegedly collected 700,000 bitcoins from investors, which the SEC calculated was worth more than US$4.5 million based on an average of bitcoin’s market price in 2011 and last year. At Wednesday’s market price, 700,000 bitcoins would be worth about $66 million.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Jake Zamansky, Contributor It should be pretty darn hot in hedge fund Steve “King” Cohen’s $60 million East Hampton beachfront estate for the rest of the summer as he huddles with his lawyers to plot his defense to the SEC’s allegations that he failed to supervise employees at SAC Capital Advisors who engaged in rampant insider trading. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Jordan Maglich, Contributor
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has announced the institution of administrative proceedings against Steven A. Cohen, the founder of SAC Capital Advisors (“SAC Capital”), alleging that he ignored various “red flags” that should have alerted him to insider trading by several employees. The charges come just days before the expiration of a statute of limitations on the majority of the conduct alleged by authorities, including the realization of collective profits of nearly $300 million from a favorable trade involving pharmaceutical giants Wyeth and Elan Corporation in July 2008. In a press release announcing the charges, the SEC indicated that it will be seeking an order prohibiting Mr. Cohen from overseeing investor funds – a potentially fatal blow to Cohen’s efforts to downplay concerns by SAC Capital investors. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Chance Barnett, Contributor As the CEO of Crowdfunder and a participant in JOBS Act legislation, I’ve had unique access to people and parties involved the regulatory process, and I wanted to share some insights with you. Those in favor of equity crowdfunding had reason to celebrate recently. On July 10th, just three months after taking office, Mary Jo White, Chairman of the SEC, called a portion of the JOBS Act to vote which passed 4-1. The SEC vote finalized rulings around Title II of the JOBS Act, which lifts the longtime ban on public solicitation and creates a new type of offering called 506(c), that essentially allows companies, for the first time in over 80 years, to freely advertise that they are fundraising to the general public. Here’s the simple SEC Fact Sheet about the vote and new ruling. When White took office she stated that she saw crowdfunding laws as a priority. With this first movement by the SEC, we see that Chairman White has the desire and will to implement the JOBS Act and crowdfunding-related laws that were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, but the SEC nearly killed JOBS Act Rulings for equity crowdfunding under the two previous Chairs. What This First SEC Ruling Around Equity Crowdfunding Means Pulling out the top level details, this ruling paves the way for companies looking to raise investment via equity crowdfunding to use a platform like Crowdfunder to advertise/promote their offering to Accredited Investors within a “walled garden”, like the Crowdfunder’s verified Accredited Investor Network. This was also made possible from a legal and regulatory perspective under a recent No Action Letter from the SEC. The more significant implication of the Title II Ruling is that companies on equity crowdfunding platforms can soon, but not today, begin promoting their investment offering OUTSIDE of a verified Accredited Investor community online, on places like social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), as long as that promotion leads back to a platform that verifies Accredited Investors before giving them access to the investment offering. Companies making offerings must also do a new and more comprehensive filing with the SEC prior to doing any solicitation. One of the most interesting areas this will have an impact is how it might shape the opportunities and behavior of existing Angel Groups. These already coordinated groups of investors have an opportunity, and it’s likely that angel groups can leverage the power of equity crowdfunding for their own benefit, if they know how to jump on the opportunity. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Wall Street’s largest trade group is about to try taking down the financial nerve center of the United States. The FBI and SEC, as well as the U.S. departments of Treasury and Homeland Security, are among about 50 banks, exchanges and other organizations participating in a high-tech war game to test institutional and individual readiness for an all-out cyber-assault. About 50 banks, exchanges and other organizations will spend Thursday testing Wall Street’s readiness for an all-out cyber-assault. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) will kick off Quantum Dawn 2 on Thursday in hopes of “informing best practices moving forward.” The mounting threat of organized, full-on cyber-attack on the financial services industry prompted the drill. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Alex Scarborough South Carolina defensive end and Heisman Trophy hopeful Jadeveon Clowney said he’s getting more and more comfortable speaking with the media, and it showed on Tuesday when he said Clemson’s Tajh Boyd and three other SEC quarterbacks, telling reporters tha …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at ESPN Headlines
By Alex Scarborough Commissioner Mike Slive started off SEC Media Days by opening up his “brag bag” of the leagues many accomplishments on and off the field of play, but the tone of his annual address quickly turned into a sharp critique of many of the NCAA’s practices. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at ESPN Headlines
By Reuters
Filed under: Goldman Sachs, SEC, Scandals and Lawsuits, Securities, Investing
By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission heads to trial Monday against a former Goldman Sachs bond trader in a case it says highlights what went wrong on Wall Street in the financial crisis.
Jury selection begins in federal court in New York in the civil fraud case against Fabrice Tourre, 34, who the SEC says misled investors in an ill-fated mortgage-securities investment called Abacus 2007-AC1.
It is the highest-profile trial to date stemming from the SEC’s investigation of the events leading up to the 2008 crisis and, legal experts say, presents a chance for the SEC to hold an individual responsible at trial.
The SEC’s case, as summed up by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest last month, is that Tourre “handed Little Red Riding Hood an invitation to grandmother’s house while concealing the fact that it was written by the Big Bad Wolf.”
According to the SEC, the wolf in question is John Paulson, a hedge fund billionaire whose bet against the subprime mortgage market was chronicled in “The Greatest Trade Ever” by Gregory Zuckerman.
In 2006, Paulson’s hedge fund, Paulson & Co., turned to Goldman Sachs Group (GS) for help betting against subprime mortgages, the SEC said.
They began discussing Abacus, which would give Paulson a role in picking the underlying portfolio of mortgage securities, the SEC said. Paulson could then short, or bet against, it through an insurance product called a credit default swap.
At the time, Tourre, a French national, was 28 years old and working at Goldman Sachs in New York. He became the bank’s principal employee working on what became Abacus, known in the financial industry as a synthetic collateralized debt obligation.
The SEC said Abacus’s marketing materials failed to disclose Paulson’s role in picking the underlying assets, instead saying that a subsidiary of ACA Capital Holdings selected them.
Tourre’s goal, the SEC contends, was to deceive investors into buying the liabilities of Abacus.
In a much-cited email sent on Jan. 23, 2007, to his girlfriend at the time, Tourre said of the financial markets: the “whole building is about to collapse anytime now.”
“Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab … standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”
When the underlying mortgage securities turned sour, investors including IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG and ABN AMRO Bank NV, now owned by Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), lost over $1 billion, the SEC said.
Paulson, meanwhile, netted …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
In a move that should create a boom in deal flow and investment activity for early stage companies, the SEC amended its rules this week to permit general solicitation of private security offerings. Industry watchers believe the new criteria could open the gates for vast amounts of additional funding. The existing “Reg D” program exemption has already been responsible for more than $1.3 trillion in funding in 2012, and more than 37,000 Regulation D offerings have been executed since 2009. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Darren Heitner, Contributor
In a 2013 NFL Draft where a total of sixty-three Southeastern Conference (SEC) players were selected by NFL teams, former Tennessee Volunteers quarterback, Tyler Bray, went undrafted. It was a fantastic three-day period for the SEC, which broke a modern NFL Draft record for number of players drafted from any one conference. The glaring exception being the fact that Tyler Bray had not been selected in any of the seven rounds.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By M. Joy, Hayes, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Many corporations tout the benefits of collegial, efficient boards with a unified vision for the company and worry that shareholder-nominated directors will disrupt this environment by bringing in conflicting agendas.
But is an efficient board with a unified vision always in the best interests of shareholders? Not necessarily.
Shareholders, keep out
A few years ago, when the SEC considered introducing a new regulation requiring public companies to include some shareholder-nominated candidates for the board of directors on their proxy statements, Chevron objected.
In a letter to the SEC, Chevron claimed the proposed regulation would “create an adversarial aspect in director interactions,” and argued that it’s better to have a governance structure that promotes “consensus-driven leadership and oversight resulting from the free and open exchange of knowledge and perspective by a board of directors working in a collegial manner for the good of the stockholders.”
That’s all well and good … if we can count on the board of directors to work in a collegial manner for the good of stockholders. But we can’t always count on them to do this. Sometimes directors make self-serving decisions that put their own interests, and the interests of company management, before those of shareholders. In such cases, shareholders have reason to bring in board members that disrupt consensus and collegiality when it doesn’t promote shareholder interests.
Score one for disruption
We don’t need to look far to see why board disruption can be a good thing. Just look at two other energy companies: Chesapeake Energy and Nabors Industries .
Chesapeake gained infamy for its poor corporate governance when founder and ex-CEO Aubrey McClendon was exposed for taking out $1.1 billion in loans against his personal stake in company-owned wells. And the company looked even worse after its board claimed that this action posed no conflicts of interest. Other scandals included McClendon’s operation of a private hedge fund with significant positions in natural gas futures, and the company’s decision to purchase McClendon’s personal map collection for $12 million, which was significantly above its assessed value.
When Chesapeake shareholders fought back by submitting a proposal in the company’s 2012 proxy pushing the company to list some shareholder-nominated directors on future proxies, Chesapeake’s objection resembled Chevron’s. It wrote, “Our Board is characterized by frank and open dialogue with management, the primary goal of which is to advance the long-term interests of our shareholders. Proxy access threatens to create a politicized environment, straining relationships among directors and between management and the Board.”
Nabors Industries, meanwhile, has been embroiled in scandals of its own. It earned the ire of shareholders when it granted its former CEO, Eugene Isenberg, a $100 million severance package for relinquishing his CEO role, even as Isenberg remained as the company’s chairman. Before that, a majority of Nabors’ shareholders voted against the board’s say-on-pay proposal. While Isenberg later agreed to forgo this severance, the board’s questionable compensation decisions undermined shareholders’ trust.
When shareholders fought back by
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes Staff
Activism is on the rise and that means Nelson Peltz is at it again. The billionaire investor has been amassing positions in and snacks food firm Mondelez, an SEC filing revealed on Friday, which suggests he could be pushing for a strategic merger. Spinning off and merging it with Mondelez would create a “monster” that would “dominate” the convenience store market, but we are still miles away from anything like that, as PepsiCo has repeatedly defended its integrated model and Peltz’s stake is still way too small to make that happen, according to a consumer goods expert.
