EthicsBite™

Fourth of July:  I took a break the week of July 4th and enjoyed family, friends and the traditions of America.

Then we all got back to work and it appears that some of that work was once again of an unethical nature.

GlaxoSmithKline paid a record $3 Billion-with-a-B in civil and criminal penalties for marketing several drugs for unapproved purposes, which is sometimes referred to as “off prescription.” The conduct was characterized in the media as “fraudulent.”

In the on-going Chesapeake Energy saga, news sources revealed that Chesapeake and Encana may have colluded on setting prices for land deals in Michigan. In other words, the people who owned the land did not receive competitive bids from the two companies.

JPMorgan Chase restated a prior quarter’s results, due to the losses in its London hedging unit. When this story first broke, CEO Jamie Dimon said the losses were $2 Billion. That number has progressively been increased ever since. Now they are restating Q1 results to cover a $4.4 Billion loss and are recognizing that the total may exceed $7 Billion. My bet is we aren’t done yet.

Penn State dealt with the Freeh report which portrayed legendary coach Joe Paterno as part of the cover-up of Sandusky’s actions.

But all of those, significant as each may be, were totally eclipsed by one single word: Libor.

More on that in the next post.