Devoted to Corporate Attorneys, Corporate Lawyers, and Corporate Counsel

The following is not meant to be legal advice.

On November 12, 2007, the American Corporate Counsel hosted an event in Mountain View, CA on corporate compliance programs and their challenges and best practices.  The speakers included Brian Martin of KLA-Tencor Corporation, David Farrell of Yahoo!, Inc., Joanne Medero of Barclays Global Investors, and Lawrence Denny of Tivo, Inc.

The event was held at the offices of Fenwick & West LLP.  The food was not of high standards, but it was amazing how some attorneys do not think it is rude to cut in line.  One lady, whose name will sure to be gotten if it occurs again, was too lazy to get to the back of the line giving the excuse that she wanted a knife.  When the person in line gave her a knife she said she wanted her own.  In the future, such woman should get in the back of the line because what she really wanted to was cut the line.

The talk gave generalizations on the compliance officer’s job to be a protector of a company’s reputation on integrity.  The company can have policies, but the compliance environment will not be there without management support.  In order to gain support by employees, a company needs to provide training to create awareness. 

Training needs to be relevant to the company, and the employees need to relate to the training.  A company should do risk assessments in order to review the issues.  Employee surveys are a way to find out what resources there are.  See if there are any trends in the geographies where a company is doing business.  Make compliance a global program.  If a program is too U.S. centric, the program will not resonate with people outside of the U.S.  See what special interests people outside of the U.S. have.  Different countries have different laws and cultures.