PwC’s Potential Role at Standard Chartered Draws Attention of NY Regulator [R&CJ]
Ruh roh: "The New York State Department of Financial Services is looking into a quirk that’s arisen over its back-to-back anti-money laundering settlements last week: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a unit of which was suspended from some consulting work for two years last Monday, has worked for Standard Chartered PLC, which the regulator penalized the next day, according to a person familiar with the matter."
An Unusual Signature Draws Attention to Nu Skin [DealBook]
If Tricky Dick came back from the dead, why would he sign SEC filings? "Former United States presidents don’t typically become bankers after their time in office. Nor, for that matter, do they come back from the dead. But Richard M. Nixon, the nation’s 37th president, appeared to have done both, at least according to a recent regulatory filing from Nu Skin, a multilevel marketing company that is based in Utah. In the filing is a document signed by a Richard M. Nixon. The odd (and unsettling) signature caught the attention of John Hempton, a short seller and the chief investment officer of the hedge fund manager Bronte Capital, who wrote a blog post on Tuesday about the matter. It turns out, however, that Mr. Nixon did not sign the document. Rather, a JPMorgan Chase employee named Richard M. Hixson did."
Grover Norquist Goes to Burning Man [NYM]
And, among other things, he learned what "taint" means.
SEC Dishing Out $300,000 Whistleblower Award to Internal Auditor [CFO]
Not a common career path: "SEC announced that it would provide a whistleblower award of more than $300,000 to a company employee who performed audit and compliance functions. The internal auditor had reported corporate wrongdoing to people within the company, including a supervisor. But when the company took no action on the information within 120 days, the whistleblower reported the same information to the SEC."
Trying My Best to Save LOCOM for Inventory [Accounting Onion]
Tom Selling fights the good fight: "[T]he extant U.S. GAAP on LOCOM embodied a principle of measuring the economic utility of an asset that exists nowhere else. It is worth preserving, if for no other reason, than to show students of accounting and business that bridges between financial reporting and economics can indeed be construct. As the last one is being blasted to smithereens, it’s legitimate to ask why there aren’t more such bridges."
Give Your Organization a Work-Life Vision [HBR]
Work-life policies are gaining momentum, but why do people still feel like their only life is work? "Because, unfortunately, policies aren’t worth much in the absence of supporting culture. Research shows that an organization’s work-life culture – all the unwritten yet well understood norms and expectations about how people are supposed to work, and what it means to be a good employee – has enormous power over behavior. Culture is what really defines how much latitude people have in terms of managing their work and non-work demands, whether or not there’s a flextime policy on the books."
The Best Body Hacks to Boost Your Productivity at Work [Lifehacker]
Among them: chew on coffee stirrers to increase focus; control your bladder to control impulsive decisions.