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To discuss the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC’s”) increasing focus on disclosure and conflict-of-interest problems arising from how private equity fund (“PE Fund”) managers allocate expenses between management and fund investors.

This article summarizes the background of this focus on expense allocations and, drawing from the recent SEC enforcement actions focused on this issue, and identifies the types of both expenses and disclosures that have caught SEC attention.

After spending the first two or three years post Dodd-Frank raising awareness of these issues, the SEC has begun to impose large fines over expense-allocation conflicts and disclosure issues.

It is imperative for PE Fund managers to retain counsel to review their fund offering documents, expense allocation practices, and compliance programs to ensure consistency with the SEC’s recent decisions on these issues.

Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual framework for the assessment of Islamic financial products’ development.

A coordinate grid with two perpendicular axes (profitability and compliance to Shari’ah) is developed and used to produce a nine-zone matrix. The research design is further developed by using a linear, composite index to assess product development feasibility and specifications. Subsequently, three strategic paths are identified: profitability-led strategic path, compliance-led strategic path and intermediate strategic path.

The findings indicate that the ideal strategic behavior the Islamic financial institutions have to borrow corresponds to the intermediate strategic path because it optimizes the trade-off between the two attributes under consideration. A proper development strategy of Islamic financial products should not ignore the compliance to the substance of Shari’ah and combine it simultaneously with profitability.

The paper’s originality consists in the identification of the portfolio of Islamic financial products’ strategic positioning in the nine-zone matrix and the determination of the most suitable product development strategy.

To summarize and interpret a Risk Alert issued on April 12, 2018 by the US SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) on the most frequent advisory fee and expense compliance issues identified in recent examinations of investment advisers.

Summarizes deficiencies identified by the OCIE staff pertaining to advisory fees and expenses in the following categories: fee billing based on incorrect account valuations, billing fees in advance or with improper frequency, applying incorrect fee rates, omitting rebates and applying discounts incorrectly, disclosure issues involving advisory fees, and adviser expense misallocations.

In the Risk Alert, OCIE staff emphasized the importance of disclosures regarding advisory fees and expenses to the ability of clients to make informed decisions, including whether or not to engage or retain an adviser.

In light of the issues identified in the Risk Alert, advisers should assess the accuracy of disclosures and adequacy of policies and procedures regarding advisory fee billing and expenses. As a matter of best practice, advisers should implement periodic forensic reviews of billing practices to identify and correct issues relating to fee billing and expenses.

Expert guidance from experienced investment management lawyer.

Literature has widely studied the financial accountability pressures on NGOs but rarely analysed how NGOs respond to them. This paper studies one large humanitarian NGO to address this question. It investigates the NGO's responses to understand the extent to which NGOs are able to regain control over their own work and turn the frames of evaluation and accountability to their own advantage.

This article draws on a case study of one of the largest French humanitarian NGOs. Interviews and observation (both participant and non-participant) were conducted in the financial department of the NGO. These data are supplemented with field-level contextual interviews.

In the NGO studied, institutional pressure is largely mediated by compliance audits. The paper thus traces the consequences of compliance audits for the NGO's central finance teams and describes how they respond. The findings detail three responses to evaluation. First, to respond to the burden of evaluation, the organisation makes itself auditable and develops preparedness. Second, to respond to the anxiety of evaluation, the organisation engages in a process of purification and succumbs to the allure of the single figure. Third, building on its newly acquired auditability and purity, the organisation performs itself as a “corporatised NGO”. Together, these three responses constitute the NGO as an “entrepreneur” competing for eligibility, and financial literacy and managerialism become crucial to respond to pressure from institutional funders.

This paper extends the understanding of organisational responses to evaluation. The authors show the influence of evaluation systems on NGOs, but also how NGOs can react to regain control over their work and turn the frames of evaluation and accountability to their own advantage. However, despite several decades of calls for broader conceptions of NGO accountability, the case NGO prefers to promote a very narrow view of its performance, based solely on accounting compliance. It takes some pride in its ability to comply with funders' and auditors' demands. Turning a simple matter of compliance into a display of good performance, it builds a strategy and competitive advantage on its ability to respond competently to evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine compliance with operating expense disclosure provisions contained in New Zealand approved accounting standards before and after the move to New Zealand equivalents to international financial reporting standards (NZ IFRS). Prior research showed poor disclosure practices and the paper seeks to determine if this has improved under international accounting standards for those who choose to adopt NZ IFRS prior to mandatory adoption.

An empirical archival approach is used. While the sample size of early adopters is small, it does provide the unique ability to control for any temporal effects on disclosure practices.

Full compliance with operating expenses that are mandated such as depreciation, directors and auditor fees under both NZ financial reporting standards (NZ FRS) and NZ IFRS was found. However, unspecified operating expense disclosures are still poor for those using NZ FRS. A substantial improvement was found in unspecified disclosure levels for those companies using the New Zealand equivalent to international accounting standard 1 (NZ IAS 1). However, the results also show areas of concern, for example, 14 per cent of listed companies using NZ IAS 1 did not disclose any unspecified expense items and 27 per cent of listed companies disclosed only one item.

The results should be of relevance to preparers, analysts and regulators. The preliminary results were provided to the New Zealand Securities Commission. After its own analysis, it issued a statement expressing concern with the high level of unexplained expenses in financial statements.

Adequate disclosure is considered a crucial element to help ensure efficient capital markets. The paper provides empirical insights into operating expense disclosure based on the requirements and wording contained within NZ FRS and NZ IFRS.

This paper examines the effect that the introduction of the FRS 9, the general disclosure standard in New Zealand, has on the level of disclosure of certain unspecified operating expenses. Generally, a low level of operating expense disclosure was found with no overall improvement recorded after the introduction of FRS 9. In many cases, companies did not disclose any unspecified operating expenses. Firm size and overseas listing/ownership appeared to be positively associated with the disclosure of unspecified operating expenses. Most companies did disclose the mandatory expenses monitored (depreciation, audit and directors' fees). Commentary is provided on the inadequacy of the discretionary aspects of accounting standards such as FRS 9, and the inadequacy of regulatory enforcement. Given the move to international harmonisation, and the level of disclosure seemingly at odds with international practice, the adoption and enforcement of International Accounting Standard 1 (IAS 1) would provide a simple solution.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the likely compliance cost of anti‐money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AMLCTF) for financial institutions in Australia to help understand the regulatory burden of the legislation.

The paper adopts a case study approach. Using the method of analogy, the cost of compliance is estimated.

It is found that the legislation brings substantial financial regulatory burden on the financial institutions in Australia. It is also found that the compliance cost is quite substantial and stands at about A$1.02 billion for the banking industry as a whole at 2007 prices. The per capita burden has been estimated at A$50 approximately. The author's estimate compares well with other publicly available estimates.

Limitations of case study research method apply. Through this case study, prior work on regulatory cost burden on organisations is confirmed – in the context of financial institutions.

Policy makers and reporting entities the world over would particularly be interested in the findings as it helps gauge the cost impact of regulatory burden the legislation imposes. The compliance cost burden could affect the overall competitiveness of Australian financial institutions particularly because of the small size of the economy in terms of population.

This is the first paper in the literature that has attempted to estimate the cost of AMLCTF compliance. It is believed that the study could provide an impetus for similar studies in other jurisdictions.

Title III of the USA Patriot Act obligated the private sector to take a more active role in deterring money laundering and disrupting terrorist financing. Complying with the new law has increased the cost of doing business dramatically for firms in the financial services industry. This study aims to apply a heterogeneous‐firm model of regulation to test whether the anti‐money laundering (AML) provisions of the Patriot Act redistributed wealth within the commercial banking and thrift sectors.

The paper analyzes a dataset comprising more than 150,000 observations.

The empirical evidence suggests that, owing to scale economies in regulatory compliance, the burden has fallen more heavily on smaller institutions. Moreover, the study does not find that the rules written to implement Title III have differentially impacted banks and thrifts at greater risk of being targeted by money launderers, as a public‐interest theory of regulation would predict.

The paper focuses on the AML provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

A report of the International Labour Organization on undeclared work in Greece refers to failures of formal institutions which contribute to the asymmetry between state and civic morality. The particular asymmetry is explored through the context of tax morale, which is one of the major determinants of the shadow economy. Although several papers have been published on the Greek shadow economy, tax morale in Greece has not been adequately explored. This research aims to investigate the effect of the economic downturn on the factors determining the level of tax morale through primary data from a European Union-funded research project on the Greek shadow economy. The findings provide policy orientations toward transferring activities from the shadow to the official economy, a goal which is part of Europe 2020 strategy.

To report inflated operating performance indicators, such as operating revenue and operating profit, managers vertically reposition revenue and expense items inside the income statement. This study aims to investigate the relationship between credit market incentives and these practices.

This study examined a sample of 1,592 Bombay Stock Exchange-listed companies from 2009 to 2021 and tested them using panel data regression models. The propensity score matching method and different measurements of classification shifting practices are used to validate the results.

The conclusions drawn from the empirical data show that firms prefer revenue shifting over expense shifting to prevent debt covenant violations. It shows that the firm’s classification-shifting practices are driven by credit market incentives. This finding is consistent with the notion of positive accounting theory that firms engage in classification shifting (earnings management) to avoid violation of debt covenants. Further, the firm’s preference for revenue shifting is in line with the ease-need-advantage-based shifting framework where firms choose the shifting tool based on costs and constraints associated with each tool.

The finding suggests that if managers heavily rely on revenue shifting to avoid debt covenant violations, the firm may end up breaking these covenants based on its actual operating performance. Managers may use aggressive accounting techniques to prevent covenant violations, which can be a warning indicator of financial difficulties or operational problems. It highlights the necessity for creditors and investors to carefully evaluate a company’s financial stability outside of the financial statements that are publicly disclosed. Authorities should create separate forensic accounting standards for auditors to check revenue items and stop the corporate misfeasance of revenue shifting.

The study is among the earlier attempts to provide empirical evidence on credit market incentives behind classification shifting practices. It is the first study that documents the substitution relationship between classification shifting forms for avoiding violation of debt covenants.