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...watchdog group's goal is to boost shareholder efforts to make firms reveal their political contributions. In the past 18 months, 10 companies, including McDonald's and Morgan Stanley, have begun disclosing donations on their websites and given their boards oversight of the contributions. (Merck, which declined comment, began disclosing contributions last year, but its board doesn't supervise its giving.) Many companies fear alienating groups with competing political interests. Of 40 firms facing shareholder-sponsored disclosure resolutions, only one, the biotech firm Amgen, recommended a yes vote. Its measure passed last week...
...stock manipulation, fraud and other forms of malfeasance, Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) has gotten tougher on corporate crime. But its latest ruling is a jaw-dropper: on May 10, the FSA announced it was suspending most operations at ChuoAoyama Pricewaterhouse Coopers, one of Japan's largest auditing firms, for two months, due to its failure to prevent accounting fraud at client company Kanebo, a textile and cosmetics firm since broken up in a government-led restructuring...
...suspension is the first ever imposed on a major Japanese accounting firm, and raises questions about ChuoAoyama's future. Some 2,300 of the firm's largest clients, which include giants like Sony and Toyota, will be forced to find replacement auditors before the suspension begins in July. "ChuoAoyama is badly tainted now," says Marc Goldstein, research director at shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services in Tokyo. "I think a lot of its clients are just going to quietly migrate somewhere else...
...prospect of large-scale defections has sparked fears that the Japanese company might conceivably collapse. Such a closure could roil a global industry dominated by only four firms. The Financial Times last week reported that PricewaterhouseCoopers CEO Samuel DiPiazza, anxious to head off speculation, sent an e-mail to his firm's managing partners urging them to reassure their international clients that the effects on the parent company would be minimal...
...Miller has asked the bankruptcy court for permission to void labor contracts, which would allow him to slash wages if the unions won't concede--a move that could spark a strike. He also wants more financial support from GM. Delphi workers, for their part, are furious that the firm wants to cut their wages 40% while company lawyers ask the bankruptcy judge to approve $60 million in bonuses for salaried staff--on top of $36 million already approved for top execs...