via Add the ABA to List of Proponents of Self-Funding for SEC – Compliance Week

Former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, now serving a 24-year prison sentence for misleading his company’s investors, intends to seek a retrial, his lawyer said.

“Mr. Skilling intends to file a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence,’’ Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling’s lead attorney, said in a filing last week in federal court in Houston. The filing didn’t give details of the nature of the new evidence, and Petrocelli didn’t immediately respond today to requests for comment.

via Enron Ex-CEO Seeks Retrial on ‘New Evidence,’ Lawyer Says – Bloomberg

Embarrassed after missing the warning signs of the financial crisis and the Ponzi scheme of Bernard L. Madoff, the agency’s enforcement division has adopted several new — if somewhat unconventional — strategies to restore its credibility. The S.E.C. is taking its cue from criminal authorities, studying statistical formulas to trace connections, creating a powerful unit to cull tips and assign cases and even striking a deal with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to have agents embedded with the regulator.

“We were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink what we do and how we do it,” said Robert Khuzami, the agency’s enforcement chief since 2009….

via With New Firepower, S.E.C. Tracks Bigger Game — DealBook

Now, a recent study co-authored by Frank D. Hodge of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business has confirmed that video can make bad news worse. The study, published in The Accounting Review, examined the impact of using video to announce financial restatements. Hodge and his co-authors, W. Brooke Elliot of the University of Illinois and Lisa Sedor of DePaul University, discovered that announcing restatements via video is beneficial only when top management, according to Hodge, “accepts responsibility for the restatement.”

via Apologizing for Bad News? Be Careful with the Video — CFO Magazine

Taxpayers pay for snagging insider traders. They could get a better return on their investment. If the government concentrated on socking insider traders with big money penalties, it would spend less, make more, and still police the markets. That would be, in the parlance of Wall Street, a good deal.

via Rajat Gupta’s trial: The case for civil charges against him – Slate Magazine.

Two insider trading defendants have tried to use “Robin Hood” or “Mother Teresa” defenses in their cases recently, without much success.

via The ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Mother Teresa’ Defenses in Insider Trading Cases – Compliance Week