Earlier this week, The Observer’s Good Companies Guide unveiled its list of the UK’s top 20 firms in the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 350 index, based on social, environmental and corporate governance criteria. The little-known Speedy Hire, an equipment rental company, made the top spot on the list for what The Observer described as [...]

Dole Food Company announced that its Costa Rican subsidiary, Fondo Nacional de Financiamento Forestal, the National Forestry Financing Fund and an entity of the Ministry of Environment and Energy of CostaRica partnered to create a carbon neutral supply chain for banana and pineapple products. The products moving from Costa Rica to North America and Europe [...]

The SEC announced the settlement of a civil lawsuit against an employee of IBM for aiding Dollar General Corporation’s accounting fraud. The final judgment ordered Kevin B. Collins to pay $95,000 for his role in assisting Dollar General’s violations of various SEC codes. Collins allegedly proposed to Dollar General to push forward a $10 million [...]

As reported by local Denver media, Colorado’s top federal judge likes to party. Now the FBI is involved, and so are allegations of violations of the Judicial Code of Conduct. Without getting into the sordid details, recently filed court documents show Colorado’s top federal judge, Judge Edward Nottingham, was too drunk to remember how he [...]

The extremely popular investment website, the Motley Fool, just ran a large profile about the positive ethics and governance of Sun Microsystems. This piece ran on the heels of a much-better-than-expected earning report. To excerpt… The company just reported stellar earnings, befitting its astronomical business name, wherein management bragged a little bit about its community [...]

After months of closed-door negotiating, pharma giant Johnson & Johnson filed a lawsuit Wednesday against The American Red Cross claiming that the Red Cross violated trademark laws by using the red cross symbol on certain commercial products. Although the American Red Cross was created in 1881, while Johnson & Johnson started using the trademark in [...]

The Senate Finance and Judiciary committees have released the results of their investigation into the SEC’s firing of a former staff lawyer, Gary Aguirre, in September 2005. Mr. Aguirre had been leading the SEC investigation into possible illegal insider trading by large hedge fund Pequot Capital that is run by Arthur J. Samberg. Aguirre was [...]

Securities regulators have announced a $6.1 million fine against Morgan Stanley for overcharging customers who purchased bonds from the firm. Morgan Stanley allegedly overcharged customers of its retail brokerage unit by $59 million for bond sales. According to FINRA, the industry’s regulatory body, an acceptable “mark-up” is typically around 5%. However, Morgan Stanley charged mark-ups [...]

Morgan Stanley had agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over alleged systemic discrimination against 1,200 African-American and Latino employees, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the case. According to the original compliant filed last year (which can be downloaded here), the firm has discriminated against African Americans and Latinos in the distribution of accounts and [...]

Six weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $5.5 million in damages in a Florida lawsuit over a defective pain-killing patch that resulted in the death of a Florida man. While initially the company looked like it would appeal the judgment, they instead tried to settle it quietly for $2.5 million. An excerpt [...]

Ryan Brant, the former CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software (maker of popular video games such as “Grand Theft Auto”), has been sentenced to five years of probation for his role in overseeing the fraudulent backdating of stock options. Mr. Brant pleaded guilty in back February. He had been facing up to four years in prison [...]

The CEO of Commerce Bancorp, Vernon W. Hill, is out of a job today. Mr. Hill, founder of the company, was pushed out by the very same board of directors that he had hand-picked to serve over the years (we reviewed Commerce’s code of conduct in the last issue of Ethisphere Magazine by the way [...]

With great fanfare yesterday, Xerox Corporation unveiled a first-of-its-kind paper for digital printing that uses half as many trees as traditional paper, while lowering the cost to mail printed material. At the core of the development are Xerox’s technical achievements, which have increased the amount of a tree that can be used (doubling the yield [...]

As reported in the Dallas Business Journal, a group of dairy farmers has filed a series of lawsuits against Dean Foods and several other companies, including Dairy Farmers of America and National Dairy Holdings, accusing them of illegal price fixing and monopolization. The lawsuit says that, as early as 2001, Dean and the others began [...]

Disney has announced a plan to become the first Hollywood studio to eliminate cigarette smoking in its movies. The announcement was made via a letter written on Disney letterhead to U.S. Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who serves as chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the internet. Read the letter here. In the [...]

Online virtual worlds like “Second Life” continue to grow at a rapid clip. Commerce, business meetings, and other far racier ‘encounters’ are becoming more commonplace in these virtual worlds. To help protect its reputation, IBM announced this week that it was establishing a code of conduct to govern its more than 5,000 employees who have [...]

As Financial Week is reporting, a new study is about to be released that links positive stock ratings by Wall Street analysts to the number of “favors” received by such analysts from the execs of the companies that they cover. The upcoming study was co-authored by professors James Westphal of the University of Michigan and [...]

Cadbury Schweppes has announced a plan to cut its net “absolute” carbon emissions. In doing so, it is promoting itself as the first UK food manufacturer to commit to using “absolute” measures in fighting climate change. By 2020, the confectionery company intends to slash half of its net absolute carbon emissions, with at least 30 [...]

We’ve all heard stories of attorneys that charge an arm and a leg (and possibly your first-born) for their services. But N.C. Superior Court Judge Ben Tennille was less than forgiving in his recent criticism of a Sears class action settlement in which attorneys collected almost 400 times the amount that the plaintiffs received. Tennille [...]

Amaranth Advisors LLC, a collapsed hedge fund, was charged by federal regulators with attempting to manipulate natural gas markets. The company is charged with attempting to lower the price of natural gas on the New York Mercantile Exchange in order to profit through an electronic futures exchange company, InterContinental Exchange Inc. The Commodity Futures Trading [...]

Land O’Lakes, Inc. has been ordered to pay a Colorado feed manufacturer $15.2 million after a federal jury found that the company knowingly infringed upon the manufacturer’s trademark. Cache La Poudre sued Land O’Lakes in 2004, alleging that the company began rebranding its lines of show feed under the brand name “Profile,” the same name [...]

According to an exclusive report coming out of Bloomberg, Medtronic, the world’s largest maker of electronic heart devices, has agreed to pay more than $75 million to settle lawsuits claiming it hid defects in its defibrillators. Medtronic has been facing approximately 2,000 claims over battery defects in the defibrillators which are potentially fatal and had [...]

TRACE International, a non-profit membership association (and important partner of the Ethisphere Council) that helps companies combat bribery, announced the creation of a new database that can help businesses track the prevalence of bribery attempts and requests. This new online tool, called BRIBEline, is backed by many leading organizations and companies such as Wal-Mart, International [...]

A recent United Nations meeting on responsible business called attention to a company’s ethical performance as an important consideration for investors deciding which companies to back. Citing findings from a recent survey by Goldman Sachs, Ling asserted that companies with strong ethical standards outperform the market. For example, companies on an ethical list compiled by [...]

French company Carrefour SA, the second-largest retailer in the world behind Wal-Mart, has been fined $2.7 million by a French regional court for: below-cost selling in certain situations; illegal collusion with suppliers; advertising prices on products which were later not sold at that price in the stores; promoting products with special prices, but not having [...]