Corporate emperors still rulesays Enron whistleblower(New Acc'ting no help

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/enron/story/0,11337,1103600,00.html

Corporate emperors still rule, says Enron whistleblower

Terry Macalister
Wednesday December 10, 2003
The Guardian

The "imperial chief executive" who treats the assets of a listed company as if they were his own is as active as ever despite attempts to clean up the corporate world, according to Sherron Watkins, who blew the whistle on her own bosses' excesses at Enron.Too many accounting rules can still be manipulated and analysts' reports remain "broadly inadequate" for giving the real picture to investors, she argued yesterday.


Legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley rules in the US have improved corporate governance but behaviour "has not got much better", the former Enron vice-president said after addressing a London meeting of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. <snip>


"I do think that the imperial chief executive officer is not dead in America. You have a lot of CEOs acting more like dictators from resource-rich African countries treating their companies' assets as their own." <snip>



Ms Watkins said it was symptomatic of the continuing rogue culture that a law firm recently organised a half-day seminar on whistleblowing under the title The Corporation Under Siege. <snip>