2009 will be A Year of Change. You are welcome to Share your expertise in The Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Observer.

Many European professionals in the GRC field are drawn to our newsletter as a critical source of GRC and ethics information. We endeavor to provide current views on the corporate regulatory environment, internal controls, and overall conduct of business related to GRC.

We are now open to ‘experts’ to provide informative articles, share their knowledge, and provide professional support. You are also welcome to propose corporate GRC topics you wish to know more about.

Send your articles to the editor.

By popular request, we have compiled a list of 100+ GRC articles in alphabetical order from earlier newsletters.

"Resistance is Sigmund Freud's concept from early in the last century. He believed that people attempt to prevent their analyst from uncovering hidden or unconscious material. in jacques Lacan's modern view 'resistance is not a question of the ill will of the client; resistance is structural, and it is inherent in the analytic process.' This means that it is natural for risk takers to resist complying with governance," writes Arthur Buchman in a Psychologist's Confessions.

We have conducted detailed interviews amongst major international companies. Based on their responses we have compiled a preliminary program of the next Copenhagen Compliance Conference. The conference will offer multiple GRC streams, allowing delegates the chance to consider Medico, Finance and IT topics in breakaway or round table sessions. We offer recipients of the GRC Observer two free books, Risk Management in Finance by Anthony Tarantino and Deborah Cernauskus, and Governance, Risk, and Compliance Handbook, edited by Anthony Tarantino, provided that you register your participation before August 31st. Please specify the reference code ADAT.

With special permission from one of Denmark’s leading Corporate Governance specialists’ Gorrissen, Federspiel and Kierkegaard we provide an analysis on how company’s noted on the Copenhagen OMX stock exchange follow the Corporate Governance recommendation.

Danish companies admitted for trading on NASDAQ OMX Copenhagen A / S shall, in their annual report must provide an explanation on how they relate to the Nørby Committee corporate management's recommendations.

The Recommendations consists of 67 specific recommendations for good corporate governance. The statement in the annual report shall be prepared in accordance with the "comply or explain" principle. We recommend revisiting our previous articles on the European Comply or Explain principles which dwell into the idiosyncrasies that companies either to follow recommendations or explain why the recommendations in whole or in part are not followed.

Now it is time for action. It will be now or never, if we cannot reform the financial sector, financial supervision, when we have a real crisis when will we reform it? I am determined to reform financial supervision in Europe I can only hope the member states will follow us. And today we are making a very important and I believe achievable and realistic, but at the same time ambitious proposals.

In April 2009 FBI opened more than 200 mortgage-fraud cases and 36 corporate-fraud investigations than in March, a by-product of the recession. FBI officials expect the number of cases to grow exponentially There’s pretty good evidence that white-collar crime, primarily embezzlement, increases during a recession.

Obviously not all well governed companies do well in the market place. Nor do the badly governed ones always sink. But even the best performers risk stumbling some day if they lack strong and independent boards of directors.

Corporate governance among the large international business enterprises in India is often considered good. The board of Satyam comprised of a bunch of esteemed business leaders. However Satyam was involved in a billion-dollar fraud.

Like in the western companies, International Indian companies with significant overseas business followed the International Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) codex and standard quite eagerly. Website jargon, diagrams and multi page glossy GRC descriptions of strenuous efforts in the annual reports showed that they were all in compliance.

The majority of respondents in this report from the survey by the Health Care Compliance Association & the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics indicated that compliance and ethics are not strongly tied to how executives and line employees are compensated. When it comes to bonuses, ethics and compliance plays an even smaller role.

Please read the following blogs

1. Haves: Finanskrise. Ønskes: Internationalt Tilsyn
2. Syv fantastiske fortællinger om God Selskabsledelse Del I
3. Syv fantastiske GRC fortællinger. Del II

The Fed spent years denying "too big to fail" even existed. The former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan argued recently that there is no escaping it. ‘Not even a constitutional amendment would prevent the government from finding a way to save the largest financial firms’, he said.

Let’s review a few examples. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, ...