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- June 2023
- Case
Dan McCrum - Unmasking Wirecard
By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang, Tonia Labruyere and Carlota Moniz
Dan McCrum, an investigative journalist for the Financial Times, had spent the past six years fighting to expose German payment processing firm Wirecard. The company had enjoyed years of exponential growth and was viewed by several investors as the poster child of...
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- December 7, 2022
- Article
Why Decentralized Crypto Platforms Are Weathering the Crash
By: Shai Bernstein and Scott Duke Kominers
In the past year, crypto markets dropped from $2.9 trillion in value to around $800 billion. In the wake of the collapse, crypto lenders and exchanges have been accused of fraud and other wrongdoing. What went wrong? One factor is competition. In theory, competition...
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- Article
When the Local Newspaper Leaves Town: The Effects of Local Newspaper Closures on Corporate Misconduct
By: Jonas Heese, Gerardo Pérez Cavazos and Caspar David Peter
We examine whether the local press is an effective monitor of corporate misconduct. Specifically, we study the effects of local newspaper closures on violations by local facilities of publicly listed firms. After a local newspaper closure, local facilities increase...
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- May 2022
- Article
When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct
By: Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
We examine gender differences in misconduct punishment in the financial advisory industry. We find evidence of a “gender punishment gap”: following an incident of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs and 30% less likely to find new jobs...
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- 2022
- Chapter
Measuring Compliance Risk and the Emergence of Analytics
By: Eugene F. Soltes
Corporate compliance manages a diverse set of regulatory and reputational concerns ranging from fraud to privacy to discrimination. However, effectively managing such risks has often been hampered by a lack of adequate information about when, where, and why misconduct...
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- December 2021
- Article
Cash-for-Information Whistleblower Programs: Effects on Whistleblowing and Consequences for Whistleblowers
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
We study the effect of financial incentives on whistleblowing and the consequences for whistleblowers under the cash-for-information program of the False Claims Act (FCA). Exploiting appeals-court decisions that increase financial incentives for whistleblowing, we find...
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- 2017
- Working Paper
Does Financial Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and Georgios Serafeim
We explore how an organization’s financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory we hypothesize that although such alumni did not participate in the financial misconduct and they had left the organization...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Once Bitten, Twice Shy: Learning from Corporate Fraud and Corporate Governance Spillovers
By: Trung Nguyen
This paper finds that investors learn from their experience with corporate fraud and financial misconduct and modify their investment behavior to avoid suspicious firms and increase corporate governance efforts. More specially, mutual funds that experienced corporate...
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- Article
Cash-for-Information Whistleblower Programs: Effects on Whistleblowing and Consequences for Whistleblowers
By: Aiyesha Dey, Jonas Heese and Gerardo Pérez Cavazos
Cash-for-information whistleblower programs have gained momentum as a regulatory tool to enforce corporate misconduct. Yet, little is known about how financial incentives affect whistleblowers’ decisions to report potential misconduct to authorities. Similarly, there...
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- Article
Is ‘Not Guilty’ the Same as ‘Innocent’? Evidence from SEC Financial Fraud Investigations
By: Eugene F. Soltes and David H. Solomon
When the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigates firms for financial fraud, investors learn about the investigation only if managers disclose it, or regulators sanction the firm. We investigate the effects of such disclosures using confidential records on...
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- May 2021 (Revised May 2022)
- Supplement
Odebrecht's 'Transformation Journey' (B)
By: Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Pedro Levindo
The case describes the changes in Odebrecht’s board of directors while the company had to file for court-supervised reorganization and cope with an ongoing feud within its founding family, and the new challenges that the Group’s leadership has to face. The changes in...
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- March 2021 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Wirecard: The Downfall of a German Fintech Star
By: Jonas Heese, Charles C.Y. Wang and Tonia Labruyere
Wirecard was a German fintech company, member of the DAX30, that provided payment processing and related services. Wirecard had enjoyed large growth rates over the years and most investors and analysts were enthusiastic about the company's prospects. Wirecard's...
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- March 2021
- Article
The Effectiveness of White-Collar Crime Enforcement: Evidence from the War on Terror
By: Trung Nguyen
This paper analyzes the impact of changes in regulatory priorities and resource allocation on criminal enforcement of white‐collar criminal activities. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a shock to the FBI's priorities and allocation of investigative resources, as...
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- January 2021 (Revised May 2021)
- Case
'GEnron'? Markopolos versus General Electric (A)
By: Jonas Heese and David Lane
In August 2019, Harry Markopolos—the forensic accountant known for uncovering Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme—alleged that General Electric had committed accounting fraud totaling $38 billion, coining the term “GEnron” for perceived similarities with the 2001 accounting...
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- August 2020
- Supplement
Luckin Coffee (B): Revelations of Fraud
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Karen Elterman
This case describes revelations of fraud at Luckin Coffee, beginning with an anonymous report in January 2020 and continuing with the company’s admission in April 2020 that it had inflated its revenues by 2.2 billion RMB ($310 million), almost half its reported...
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- July 2020
- Article
Does Corporate Misconduct Affect the Future Compensation of Alumni Managers?
By: Boris Groysberg, Eric Lin and George Serafeim
Using data from a top-five global executive placement firm, the authors explore how an organization's financial misconduct may affect pay for former employees not implicated in wrongdoing. Drawing on stigma theory, they hypothesize that although such alumni did not...
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- June 2020
- Case
Recovering Trust After Corporate Misconduct at Wells Fargo
By: Suraj Srinivasan and Jonah S. Goldberg
The case describes widespread misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank in the period leading up to 2017 and the company’s subsequent attempts to improve internal controls, company culture, and corporate governance. The case examines the potential causes of large scale...
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- March 2020 (Revised April 2021)
- Case
Odebrecht's 'Transformation Journey' (A)
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Lynn S. Paine, Ruth Costas and Mariana Cal
At the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in Latin America, Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht signed a leniency agreement with American, Swiss and Brazilian prosecutors in 2016 admitting to paying bribes in 12 countries. In an effort to regain financial...
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Keywords:
Board Of Directors;
Organizational Transformations;
Business Ethics;
Corruption;
Internal Controls;
Business And Government;
International Business;
Engineering And Construction;
Family Businesses;
Corporate Misconduct;
Corporate Governance;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Transformation;
Organizational Culture;
Crisis Management;
Ethics;
Engineering;
Family Business;
Crime and Corruption;
Emerging Markets;
Construction Industry;
Brazil;
Latin America
- 2019
- Article
The Frequency of Corporate Misconduct: Public Enforcement versus Private Reality
By: Eugene F. Soltes
Perceptions about the frequency of misconduct—among the public, academics and even
regulators—have largely been formed by examining enforcement statistics, which rely on the detection and sanctioning of the misconduct. This study aims to illuminate the real occurrence...
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- September 2019
- Case
Accounting Fraud at Tesco Stores (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan and Julia Kelley
This case describes the accounting fraud at Tesco Stores Limited (TSL), which was discovered by a senior accountant in TSL’s finance department. The accountant was concerned about TSL’s handling of commercial income, which, according to the accountant, overstated...
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