Word: parmalat
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...developing sophisticated offshore financial markets out of the reach of national regulators. The International Monetary Fund estimates that as much as $7 trillion in financial assets of various kinds are now held offshore. Concerns about money laundering and revelations about the role of tax havens in corporate scandals like Parmalat and Enron - both of which used a complex web of holding companies in places such as the Cayman Islands and, yes, Delaware - are turning up the regulatory heat on territories associated with flighty finance. Last week tax officials from the U.S., Germany, France and four other Western countries...
...challenged his G-7 partners over the weekend to follow suit on his country's draft plan to crack down on tax havens. At a meeting of G-7 Finance Ministers in Florida, Tremonti unveiled details of the proposal - part of a broader regulatory reform to respond to the Parmalat scandal - that requires Italian companies to be far more transparent about offshore holdings, including the way they are accounted for (or not) on the books. In the U.S., John Kerry, the front runner in the race to become the Democrats' candidate for President, is promising that, if elected...
...Vodafone. He created a huge outcry about rich, arrogant executives. "Managers have lost contact with reality and live in an illusory world," railed Hans Leyendecker, a commentator for Süddeutsche Zeitung. Similarly, Italians have been wringing their hands since the discovery of massive fraud at Parmalat, wondering when the other wing tip would drop in what seems to be a corporate system with blind spots. Sure enough, seven top officials at software firm Finmatica are now under investigation for alleged market rigging and obstruction; founder Pierluigi Crudele faced his first round of questioning last Friday. He took the hint...
...Will Parmalat become Italy's Enron, a crisis that leads to business reform? Don't bet on it. Yes, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi amended Italy's antiquated bankruptcy rules to protect Parmalat from creditors, and the government plans to merge a plethora of regulators into a single agency with real teeth. But the credibility of these efforts is being undermined by Berlusconi himself, Italy's richest man. For instance, last year the government reduced the penalties for false accounting, an offense for which Berlusconi was indicted in 1999. Also, to avoid bribery charges, he pushed through...
...scandal has rocked Italy and is prompting calls for more reform in a country famous for family entrepreneurs and infamous for the chaotic structure of their companies. The latter keeps the taxman at bay, but it's one reason Italian companies have had difficulty attracting foreign capital. Parmalat was supposed to be different. Tanzi got his start in business as a 21-year-old, when his father died and he took over the family's small prosciutto-ham factory. On a trip to Sweden, he noticed milk packaged in cartons and brought the concept to Italy. Later he adopted...