Google's chief legal officer slapped with SEC fines
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(InfoWorld) - Google's chief legal officer was fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Thursday over accounting issues arising from when he was chief financial officer (CFO) at former company. David C. Drummond, former CFO of software maker SmartForce, was ultimately responsible for financial statements that overstated revenue by $113.6 million and net income by $127 million during a three and a half year period ending in mid-2002, the SEC said. "Drummond's violations arose in part out of his failure to determine whether SmartForce was improperly recognizing revenue (which it was) on a reseller agreement," the SEC said. Drummond became Google's vice president of corporate development in 2002, in addition to taking on the role of chief legal officer, according to Google's Web site. SmartForce has since merged into SkillSoft PLC. The SEC fined Drummond and three other former SmartForce executives a total of $2.3 million, while the company's accounting firm, Ernst & Young Chartered Accountants of Ireland, was ordered to pay $725,000 for the transgressions. The U.S. District Court of New Hampshire also ordered three of the former SmartForce executives to pay civil fines related to the accounting charges, in a case filed by the SEC. Drummond was required to pay the highest fine among the three, $125,000. He and the two other executives neither admitted nor denied allegations in the SEC complaint, according to the statement. Google was glad to see the matter brought to a close. "David has been an important part of Google's growth and success and we look forward to his continued contributions," the company said in a statement attributed to CEO Eric Schmidt. A lawyer representing Drummond said in a separate statement that his client had acknowledged that a background in accounting would have helped him in his job at SmartForce, and that during the years in question, SmartForce and other companies were dealing with rapid changes in sales models and accounting rules. SmartForce's outside auditors, Ernst & Young, were also apparently incorrect about how the new rules should be applied, the statement said.
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The top three executives of the American Stock Exchange may face civil charges for failing to properly enforce the exchange's rules.
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Twenty-nine investment firms, including some of Wall Street's biggest names, have been fined a total $9.2 million by securities regulators who said they were late in reporting disciplinary history and other data about their brokers. The investment arms of Merrill Lynch &amp; Co. and Wachovia Corp. were barred from registering new brokers for five business days.
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An Arkansas judge begins weighing objections this week to a $90 million class-action settlement between Internet search leader Google Inc. and advertisers who say they were victims of "click fraud."
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By Bloomberg News. A judge dismissed a lawsuit against Lawrence J. Ellison, chief executive of the Oracle Corporation, and Jeffrey O. Henley, its chairman, that accused them of insider trading
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The Securities and Exchange Commission approved settlements with Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Mercury Interactive Corp. , the first companies to be fined since the government's crackdown on illegal stock options backdating began more than a year ago.
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Google, the search engine which floated on the Nasdaq market last week, has the worst corporate governance structure of any company in the S&amp;P 500 index, according to an influential investor advisory group.
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The software giant agreed to pay $225 million to avoid criminal prosecution in an accounting scandal that has brought down several of its top executives.
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The plaintiff in a long-running  trademark infringement lawsuit against Google Inc agreed on  Friday to drop its case targeting the Web search advertising  leader&#39;s core business, according to court filings.
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Brocade Communications Systems  Inc's  former CEO was sentenced on Wednesday to 21  months in prison for backdating stock-option grants in a  scandal that has ensnared scores of U.S. companies and led to  billions of dollars of restatements.
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Google Inc.'s plans to move ahead with its initial public stock offering ran into a roadblock when the Securities and Exchange Commission didn't approve the Internet search giant's regulatory paperwork as requested.
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Former Red Robin Gourmet Burgers Inc.  Chief Executive Michael Snyder agreed to pay a $250,000 civil penalty and to be barred as an officer and director to settle charges he misrepresented personal travel costs as business expenses, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday.
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In today&#39;s fines, Merrill Lynch &amp; Co. was hit with the second largest, at US$1.6 million, followed by American Express Financial Advisors, at $700,000.
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Google Inc.  said on Friday its board of directors had agreed to pay executive officers a bonus of up to $1.5 million total for 2006, but it was not clear if the plan applied to the billionaires who started the Web search leader.
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A federal court ordered Stephen Richards, head of worldwide sales at CA Inc.,  to pay $29.7 million in restitution to stockholders for his part in a major fraud scheme at the software company.
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An executive charges that Google and other Web services still need rich functions on clients.
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Google Inc.'s chief financial officer will retire by the end of the year, creating the most prominent job opening at the Internet search leader since it went public three years ago.