| The Rise of the Risk Executive: A ReappraisalChief risk officers have found a home in the C-suite. Are they stuck there? |
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| Risk Governance, Incentives and Cognitive BiasPoor corporate governance and the cognitive biases of senior management were at the heart of the financial crisis. To drive better outcomes, we must better understand the relationship between incentives and the effectiveness of risk management. |
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| Steady as She SlowsAs the crisis of 2008 further recedes, and the mixed market messages of 2011 make way for fresh hopes, risk experts are looking forward with tempered optimism. |
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| UBS Reinstalls Lofts as CROMaureen Miskovic, the first woman on UBS's executive board, has been replaced as chief risk officer by Philip Lofts, who was group CRO before her arrival. |
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| MF Global Fallout: Good or Bad News for CROs?The demise of MF Global has cast yet another spotlight on the role of risk managers at financial firms under stress, with consequences both positive and negative, according to risk managers, analysts and academics. |
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| Slow Road to the TopWhy haven't more CROs or others with risk management backgrounds risen into CEO positions at major banks over the last few years? |
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| Naming NamesRisk managers, investors and regulators seeking guidance about publicly held companies with troublesome risk profiles are getting some help from corporate governance research organization GMI. |
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| Risk Appetite: Ensuring Board and Senior Management Accountability for RiskBefore regulators and institutional investors can scrutinize corporate risk appetite, there is yet another rather fundamental hurdle -- the lack of clarity in the terminology used in risk appetite discussions. |
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| Should the Board Have a Separate Risk Committee?The Dodd-Frank Act requires a separate risk committee for publicly traded bank holding companies. Is it a good idea for non-financial companies? |
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| Risk Appetite, Corporate Culture and 'Tone at the Top'Boards of directors -- and the tone they set -- play a pivotal role in changing corporate culture through risk appetite and related risk tolerances. |
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| Cultures by the BooksTwo noteworthy business books published this year convey important lessons on the effectiveness of a strong risk culture and, conversely, what happens when it is lacking. |
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| Science of CultureThe financial crisis and more recent, catastrophe-related<br/>headlines have shined new light on corporate culture and its<br/>subsidiary, risk culture. |
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| BofA Regroups AgainFor the third time in as many years, Bank of America has a new chief risk officer. |
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| How Risk Professionals Can Articulate Their ValueRisk professionals who want to influence executive strategy could start by changing their mindset -- and the way they communicate with senior management. |
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| How to Know AsiaChina poses great opportunities, says Yuanta CRO Connie Lin, but there are challenges and risks galore, particularly barriers to entry that are both regulatory and logistical. |
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| More of the Same, But DifferentThe changeable macro climate weighs heavily on the minds of risk officers -- like Constellation Energy's Brenda Boultwood -- and others in or close to the field who provided input for our second annual Year Ahead in Risk Management report. |
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| If Only They Had ListenedEver since a credit crunch in 2007 set the scene for the market collapse of 2008, financial industry executives and their risk managers have been haunted by “might have beens.” |
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| Missing MadoffThe few global banks that avoided the real estate derivatives that laid low Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG still missed valuable opportunities to stem other extreme losses. |
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| Catalogue of FollyA late 2010 book release, "All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis", by journalists Bethany McLean of Vanity Fair and Joe Nocera of the New York Times, could just as easily have been called "All the Warnings Were There: The History Was Not-So-Hidden But Was Largely Ignored." |
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| Inside OFS: Managing Risks in a Government Start-up OrganizationThe United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability, the execution arm of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is basically a $700 billion capital markets start-up wrapped around a federal government core. |
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| Audits and Controls Get an UpdateAcknowledging how the business environment has grown more complex over the past two decades, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) is preparing a significant overhaul of its “Internal Control -- Integrated Framework” principles. |
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| Post-Crisis Risk Management: Building BlocksThe global financial crisis produced many painful outcomes: historic losses, institutional failure, fear, finger-pointing and unprecedented government actions. For those financial services firms fortunate enough to survive, however, the crisis also yielded a highly valuable output: sharp insights into the strengths and weaknesses of their risk management programs. |
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| Growth Management The financial crisis has revealed the weaknesses and unsustainability of the growth achieved by several financial institutions that frequently did not adequately account for strategic risk in their organizations. |
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| State Street Corp. Hires from OutsideJoseph (Jay) Hooley, who became State Street Corp.’s CEO March 1, reached outside the $162 billion-in-assets bank to tap Andrew Kuritzkes as chief risk officer. A long-tenured partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman Group, Kuritzkes had recently served as a senior adviser to the U.S. Committee on Capital Markets Regulation. |
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| BofA’s Curl Lands At Singapore FundGregory Curl, a former Bank of America Corp. chief risk officer who retired in March after being in the running to succeed Kenneth Lewis as the U.S. banking giant’s CEO, has taken a top position at the Singapore government investment agency Temasek Holdings. |
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| Audit Body Seeks Broader DialogueWith corporate boards and their audit committees diving increasingly deeply into risk and other management and policy concerns, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Audit Quality touched all of those bases with the recent appointment of Angela Desmond as senior director of external relations. |
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| New Orders For AuditorsThe auditing profession has been getting strong messages about having to play a more active role in risk management, and for two years it has known that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was going to prescribe specific risk assessment standards. |
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| Directors AwakeIf the recent financial crisis reflected failures in corporate governance and if governance starts at the top, than there could hardly be a better barometer of change and reform than the National Association of Corporate Directors. |
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| New View from the TopFirst came the financial crisis, then crash courses in risk management. Corporate directors' education is still a work in progress, but there is no disputing that they're the ones who ultimately have to take charge. |
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| Enterprise Risk GovernanceEnterprise risk management is de rigueur, to be sure, a common heads-up from the consulting crowd and even a regulatory or internal-audit checklist item. But according to 2009 research from the National Association of Corporate Directors and Oliver Wyman Group, 56% of board members considered themselves effective or highly effective in oversight of operational and strategic risks. |
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| Consistency and Persistence Regardless of how accountable boards of directors were for what went wrong in 2007 and 2008, the reality is that they sit atop the corporate governance pyramid, and that is where reforms have to be adopted and disseminated. |
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| Bringing Directors Up to SpeedReacting to shareholder unrest over the hole it dug for itself in the financial crisis, and particularly its hasty acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., Bank of America Corp. in April made a major change in its corporate governance. |
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| Structuring for AccountabilityWhy didn't directors and risk managers do more to mitigate the current crisis, or at least minimize the impact to their organizations? Is that even a fair question? |
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| Risk and ReportingDepending on your point of view, U.S. regulators’ recent stress testing of the biggest financial institutions was handled in a cautious and sensitive manner, or as a political and economic hot potato. |
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| Citigroup’s Board of BankersCitigroup, recipient of $45 billion in government aid, which has restructured aggressively and overhauled its executive ranks in hopes of making a fresh start, has also raised its level of financial risk awareness in the boardroom. |
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| Risk Governance at Large Banks: Current Status and The Way ForwardAs the role of the board of directors in risk oversight has come under scrutiny, questions have been asked about the independence of the risk management function. Though some progress has been made, there is still lots of room for improvement in risk governance at many large banks. |
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| The Overlooked Outside AuditorEconomic pressures have turned up the spotlight on corporate auditing as much as on risk management. The audit committees on boards of directors typically take oversight responsibility for financial reporting as well as risk, complementing the work of risk management committees where they exist. |
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| The Hard Work of Culture-BuildingFinancial firms have learned a crucial lesson from the economic crisis: There is a better way to manage risk. Although many people limit their thinking about past failures just to independent control groups, risk management is much broader than that. It must be interwoven with business strategy and even corporate culture to foster the proper balance of risk and return throughout an organization. |
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| Bank of America Attempts Fresh StartTo help shake off regulatory and legal concerns related to its responses to the financial crisis and takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co., Bank of America Corp. has been shaking up its director and officer ranks. Like Citigroup before it, BofA has added a strong cast of former bankers to its board. |
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| Lawyers to Boards: Get a Handle on RiskCorporate directors in recent months have gotten an earful from governmental, academic and other quarters about how they need to learn from the financial crisis and get more involved and up to speed on risk management matters. But they may not yet have seen anything quite so weighty as the 26-page, 10,000-word boom that an American Bar Association task force lowered in August. |
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| Managing the Multinational WayIf you don't understand a risk, don't take it, says John Hennessy, Santander Group's head of wholesale risk management in London. |
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| Coverage ConundrumFinancial service company boards, under fire for their actions -- or lack thereof -- in dealing with the economic crisis, are paying a price in insurance coverage. Or lack thereof. |
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| The Years of the SwansRisk management has been embedded in BlackRock from the start, says CRO Bennett Golub, and the returns on that investment are evident in tough times. |
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