The Ethical Barometer

In 2004, The Wall Street Journal called Loretta Fredy Bush, the founder of Xinhua Finance, one of its “Women to Watch” for 2004. We may have misunderstood the meaning of the term “watch.”  Ms. Fredy Bush was indicted on May 10, 2011 for conspiracy, mail fraud, and the usual components of insider trading related to shares in a Xinhua subsidiary.  We didn’t know “to watch” meant we were to hold stake-outs.

However, even minimal observations of Ms. Fredy Bush would have been revealing. Shortly after the Journal published Continue reading →

Paul Wolfowitz resigned in 2007 as head of the World Bank after a tale emerged of his HR intervention on behalf of a bank executive he was dating. Managers not dating those who report to them is one of those logical HR rules – probably a bad idea.  Wolfowitz  defended his actions until he was blue in the fact, but the world saw otherwise, and he had to go.

Now the UN twin, the IMF, finds itself with a managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who faces charges of sexually assaulting a chamber maid in his $3,000 per night hotel suit in Manhattan. New York police officers yanked him off a plane Continue reading →

“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”  Mark Zuckerberg, founder, co-founder, whatever (depending on litigation) and CEO of Facebook

Well, except that Facebook hired a PR firm to cajole, convince, and coax op-ed writers and other bloggers/journalists to post negative stories about Google’s Social Circle — a bit of a threat to Zuckerberg et al..  E-mails reveal that the PR firm, in full persuasive swing, did not indicate who its client was.  Both those who wrote without disclosing their PR motivator (and lack of curiosity about their solicitor Continue reading →

Raj Rajaratnam looked much thinner and very much frightened as he made his way, with his ankle monitor, from the federal court building.  A jury had just given the prosecution convictions on all 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy.  Insider trading is a practice that stacks the system for the big fish.  The tapes were damning.  In one wiretapped phone call, a Goldman director gave Raj a tip that was the opposite of the street’s conventional wisdom, and Galleon made a bundle Continue reading →

Warren Buffett was asleep at the wheel.  And he didn’t wake up when he realized that one of his lieutenants who was likely to succeed him had purchased stock in a company and then pitched the idea of Berkshire Hathaway acquiring it. David Sokol, now departed from Berkshire Hathaway, bought $10 million in shares of Lubrizol, a company whose acquisition he would later shepherd through Berkshire Hathaway. Continue reading →

There is a certain thrill to a line of logic that skates along with facts that lead to one unassailable conclusion but then loops through a back swizzle and a camel spin to land in a solution that finds our brains twirling. Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel has been caught in a cover-up of the antics of his well-tattooed players who traded autographed Ohio State and Big Ten championship trinkets, shirts, and other memorabilia. Continue reading →