May 2006

On May 30, 2006, American Tower Corporation became the fourth company to be named in a securities class action lawsuit connected with the options backdating probe. (As noted in this prior post on The D & O Diary, the three companies previously named in securities class action lawsuits related to options backdating are Vitesse…

Individual Settlement Contributions: When the Enron and WorldCom consolidated class action settlements were announced, much was made of the fact that individual directors and officers were compelled to contribute to those settlements out of their own assets without recourse to insurance or indemnity. This occasioned debate about whether the requirement for individuals’ settlement contribution represented …

The so-called “Thompson Memo,” is an internal Department of Justice memorandum specifying the circumstances under which business organizations will be criminally prosecuted. The document places a great deal of emphasis on an organization’s level of cooperation in the prosecutor’s decision whether or not to prosecute the firm. The memo’s onerous cooperation standards have been the…

On May 12, 2006, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York preliminarily approved the settlement of the consolidated derivative litigation filed on behalf of AOL Time Warner against 25 of the company’s present and former directors and officers as well as other third party defendants. The various derivative lawsuits alledged…

Numbers Pressure: In an article in its May 2006 issue, CFO Magazine reports the results of a survey of finance executives. Among other things, the survey participants were asked:

Do you ever feel pressure from your superiors to use aggressive accounting techniques to make results appear more favorable?

11 percent of public company participants and…

Well, it didn’t take long for my prediction in yesterday’s post — that we would be hearing more about options backdating — to be proven correct. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page article (via wsj.com, subscription required) reporting that United Health Group has warned that it may need to restate three years of…