Gonzales has been in hot water on Capitol Hill for a while, after repeatedly denying and then admitting he was lying about an affair with a married staffer who later committed suicide in exceedingly grisly and tragic fashion.
Ryan's push for aggressive enforcement clashed with SEC leadership, leading to her resignation. The agency's current approach requires political appointees to approve investigations into their allies.
What most leaders label as a content problem is actually a presence problem. Leaders often assume credibility rises and falls based on wording alone. In reality, credibility is shaped by executive presence, which reflects the signals leaders send about confidence, clarity, and authority before their ideas are fully heard.
Research finds that relying on regulations to determine your policies and procedures can result in ethical blindspots, or situations where people might think if there is not a rule for something, that it's permissible. After years of shifting towards values and culture-based compliance, leadership might be heading the opposite direction.
For patents to be born strong, and the public to have confidence that they are, we must ensure strict adherence to USPTO's ethical standards and avoid (real or apparent) conflicts of interest.
Rather than stolen data making headlines, it was business stoppage that triggered attention. Moving into 2026, the board's focus should be on ensuring business continuity and building resilience in the face of emerging risks generated by AI usage and attack vectors, quantum computing and geopolitics.
If your partner in Munich mishandles customer data, or your reseller in Paris uses a "black box" AI tool to generate deceptive ads, it isn't just their reputation on the line. It's yours. With the EU AI Act now in full swing and GDPR entering its "mature enforcement" era, the distance between a partner's mistake and your company's $20 million fine has never been shorter.
ADM announced on Tuesday that it has entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to resolve its investigation into ADM's prior reporting of inter-segment sales, without admitting or denying any wrongdoing. As part of the settlement, ADM agreed to pay a $40 million penalty. According to the SEC, ADM engaged in years of profit-shifting that made its star nutrition segment appear to meet ambitious growth targets, even as demand softened and margins declined.
As we kick off 2026, activist investor campaigns are no longer just prevalent; they are global, sophisticated, and have increasingly become an acute threat to corporate leadership. The escalating pressure is undeniable: Barclays data shows that activist investor campaigns hit a high last year - surpassing 2024 by 5% - with 32 CEOs resigning as a result (a record) - and showing no signs of slowing down.
As audit committees confront a rapidly expanding risk landscape, their role in corporate governance is being reshaped. Boards have often turned to current and former CFOs as independent directors, particularly for audit committees, because of their ability to translate complex operational and financial realities into effective oversight.For example, this month, J. Michael Hansen, former EVP and CFO of Cintas Corporation, was appointed to the audit committee at Paychex.