Word: sec
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Burst. Sporkin sees the violations as "a blight on our great economic system. We've got to stop it." He came by his love of justice from his father, a Philadelphia judge. After honing his business instincts by becoming a C.P.A. and a lawyer, Sporkin joined the SEC in 1962, quickly gaining a reputation as a fierce investigator. When the job of top cop came open, Sporkin was a natural for it. But neither his superiors nor his wife nor three children have ever been able to make him look like a businessman-or a lawyer either. Enveloped...
During one recent hour-long meeting, he mapped out a course in management fraud for Yale Law School (his alma mater) while rewriting some SEC legislation and fielding half a dozen phone calls. Sporkin has also been known to lean back in a meeting with high-powered business executives for ten minutes of closed-eye contemplation that uncannily resembles sleep-and then deliver a machine-gun burst of pointed questions...
...budget so small-only $1.5 million a year -Sporkin has had to find shortcuts to save staff time and money. He has, for example, encouraged lawyers and accountants to watch for wrongdoing in the companies they serve, then report it to the SEC. Says Sporkin: "We get at least two or three tips a day from them...
...Home? When the wave of slush-fund and payoff scandals began to break, he also developed the idea of consent agreements. His bright young staff-average age is under 30-would collect evidence of wrongdoing and confront the companies with it. Then the corporations would continue the probe under SEC supervision, using untainted directors, lawyers and accountants to do the work. In the Gulf Oil case, the guilty company spent $3.5 million on its investigation...
Many businessmen feel Sporkin is overreaching his authority. Milton Freeman, who heads an American Bar Association subcommittee on SEC enforcement activities, insists that bribes, payoffs and political contributions are not "material" to stockholder interests -as long as dollar amounts remain relatively minor compared with company income. Says he: "If payoffs are being made overseas, and it's not hurting the company, it's no business of the SEC." Sporkin's reply: "What can be more important to stockholders than knowing how companies account-or don't account-for their money...