Mad hatter\u27s corporate tea party

This paper aims to provide an insight into the corporate greed and consequent corporate collapses of companies such as HIH, One.Tel and Harris Scarfe in Australia, while concurrently, Enron, WorldCom and other companies were attracting the attention of the accounting profession, the regulators and the general public in the USA. It is argued that the rise in economic rationalism and the related increased materialism of both the public and company directors and managers, fed the corporate excesses that resulted in spectacular corporate collapses, including one of the world&rsquo;s largest accounting firms. The opportunistic behaviour of directors, and managers and the lack of transparency and integrity in corporations, was compounded by the failure of the corporate watch-dogs, such as auditors and regulators, to protect the public interest. If the history of bad corporate behaviour is not to be repeated, the religion of materialism needs to be recognised and addressed, to ensure any corporate governance reforms proposed for the future will be effective.<br /

Evolving Regulation of Corporate Governance and the Implications for D&O Liability: The United States and Australia

This Article compares the modern corporate regulatory environments in the United States and Australia, including an analysis of the climate for Directors & Officers (D & O) liability coverage. Comparing these regulations across two large markets with similar historical bases for assessing director and officer liability allows us to explore which reforms may be more effective as new scandals emerge

A Decade of Providing Protection: The Case for Revision of the Australian General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme

This thesis critically analyse the effectiveness and adequacy of the Australian General Employee Entitlements Redundancy Scheme (GEERS) in providing protection for employee entitlements in the event of corporate insolvency. This analysis includes consideration of the scheme's origins, eligibility criteria, coverage of employee entitlements, and method of funding. It surveys national and international alternative models for protection of employee entitlements. In conclusion this thesis makes the case for revision of GEERS and provides the essential elements of a revised scheme

Toward a Public Enforcement Model for Directors\u27 Duty of Oversight

This Article proposes a public enforcement model for the fiduciary duties of corporate directors. Under the dominant model of corporate governance, the principal function of the board of directors is to oversee the conduct of senior corporate officials. When directors fail to provide proper oversight, the consequences can be severe for shareholders, creditors, employees, and society at large. Despite general agreement on the importance of director oversight, courts have yet to develop a coherent doctrine governing director liability for the breach of oversight duties. In Delaware, the dominant state for U.S. corporate law, the courts tout the importance of board oversight in dicta, yet emphasize in holdings that directors cannot be personally liable for oversight failures, absent evidence that they intentionally violated their duties

The IT Manager: an Endangered Species?

Information Technology is generally acknowledged to be an indispensable part of business today, so it might be thought that companies generally employed IT staff. A survey was carried out on a large sample of New South Wales companies to discover how many companies had any IT staff. It showed that only about 25% of the sample had such staff. About a quarter of companies turning over $5m -$10m and half the companies turning over $10m -$50m had IT managers. These figures suggest that the most NSW companies have no IT staff, which has implications for a wide range of governance issues