Corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores are meant to measure a company’s commitment to ethical practices and social contributions. CSR scores have their critics. Among other concerns, the scores are sometimes criticized for their lack of uniformity, their reliance on subjective or qualitative measures, and their lack of verifiability. A recent Wall Street Journal column criticizes CSR scores on yet another ground, which is, according to the author, that CSR scores may serve as a way for companies to mask financial fraud.Continue Reading What Can Corporate Social Responsibility Scoring Tell Us About Financial Fraud?
While financial fraud has always been an important enforcement target for the SEC, the agency recently has shown increased attention to financial reporting cases. In the following guest post, Robert F. Carangelo, Paul A. Ferrillo and Andrew Cauchi of the Weil Gotshal law firm take a look at the SEC’s recent focus on financial reporting and the particular issues that have drawn the agency’s scrutiny. I would like to thank Rob, Paul and Andrew for their willingness to publish their article on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this site’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ guest post.