To strengthen your risk culture, start by asking these questions

Aug 28, 2012 08:22

As board members and management look to improve their organization's Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) system, it's important to start by asking several critical questions, financial consultant Roberta Wagner of Bugbee Wagner PLLC says. In this guest column, Wagner proposes several topics executive leaders should probe in order to strengthen the process. ?

Enterprise Risk Management: Organization or Culture Risk

?By Roberta Wagner

The hub of any strong Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) system is the organization?s risk climate or culture, i.e., the attitude and approach the organization takes toward identifying, monitoring, controlling, and mitigating risk.

Truly understanding the risk climate requires more than just completing checklists. It is at the very heart of how executive management and the board approach risk and it?s often not black or white. How are decisions made in the organization? Are opposing concerns minimized? Are executives encouraged to discuss concerns? How does the board or executive management discuss the things that keep them awake at night? How strong is the ?bad-news network?? How is the quality of management and human resources practices incorporated into the ERM system?

Below are some questions that board members and CEOs might ask to begin this critical part of developing a sound ERM. We find in our work with organizations that assembling confidential board and management responses to these questions is often enlightening and can help to strengthen the risk culture.

1. Have the major perceived risks to the organization been:

a. Identified,

b. Ranked, and

c. Discussed with the board?

2. What risks do you see that are not either clearly identified or a part of management/board focus?

3. Has the board approved a risk appetite statement?

4. What are the incentives and penalties for officers who identify risk in the organization?

5. How are the ?cons? of a major new initiative handled in executive management and board sessions? Does an atmosphere of ?group think? prevail, or are alternative ideas encouraged?

6. What happens when a major risk is uncovered that was not identified by management?

7. How are concerns about executive performance handled?

8. Is the board conversant with the various risks?

9. Is there a split on the board?

10. Does the board add value to strategy development?

11. Can you clearly describe your institution?s strategy?

12. Does the entire executive management team have responsibility for ERM or has one lower level officer been assigned the responsibility?

13. Have both performance and leading indicators been identified for all major risks? (For example, on asset quality, a key performance indicator is the coverage ratio. Risk indicators for various concentrations in the portfolio might include industry performance ratios.)

14. How are risks monitored and reported? Do you have a risk model?

15. How strong are your controls on risk? (For example, audit or policy limits and reporting.)

Just answering these questions and having a candid, thorough discussion of what that means for ERM in your organization will take you a long way in developing a strong ERM system.

?

Roberta Wagner has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry in senior regulatory and consulting roles. She is a founding partner of Bugbee Wagner PLLC (www.bugbeewagner.com), which is headquartered in Gig Harbor, WA and provides enterprise risk management, regulatory advisory, and other traditional management consulting services to financial institutions.?

Source: http://www.sageworksinc.com/blog/post/2012/08/28/strengthening-risk-culture-for-enterprise-risk-management.aspx

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China, wary of Arab Spring, hosts Egypt's Morsi

BEIJING (AP) ? Egypt's newly elected president met with China's future leader Wednesday on the second day of a visit that seeks to deepen economic and diplomatic ties despite Beijing's uneasiness with the Arab Spring revolution that helped bring him to power.

President Mohammed Morsi hopes his trip will bring trade and investment to shore up his country's flagging economy. On Tuesday, China pledged $200 million in credit for the National Bank of Egypt, with the sides also signing agreements on agriculture, telecommunications, the environment and other areas.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping told Morsi on Wednesday that China placed "tremendous value on this visit."

"It is hoped this visit will further increase our mutual understanding and trust, promote greater cooperation and exchanges between our two countries, bring new vitality to bilateral relations and open a new chapter in friendly contacts," said Xi, who is due to take over as president next spring in a transition of power to a younger generation.

Morsi responded by terming Egyptian-Chinese ties as a "strategic relationship" he hoped to enhance with his meetings in Beijing.

Morsi, an Islamist who took office in June as Egypt's first freely elected civilian president, met Tuesday with President Hu Jintao.

It is Morsi's first state visit outside the Middle East and Africa since becoming president, underscoring China's importance as one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and as a vital source of trade and investment. The visit is also seen as part of a reorientation of Egyptian foreign policy away from a heavy focus on the U.S.

Morsi was preceded to Beijing by a delegation of 80 Egyptian business leaders who planned to discuss investment projects with 200 Chinese counterparts.

The trip is also a chance for the countries to rebuild their relations in the wake of the popular uprising last year that drove longtime President Hosni Mubarak from power, paving the way for democracy and Morsi's election.

China's authoritarian one-party government was decidedly cool toward that movement, criticizing what Chinese state media derided as thuggish "street democracy." Beijing bitterly condemned the NATO air campaign that brought down dictator Moammar Gadhafi in neighboring Libya and continues to join with Russia in blocking U.N. Security Council actions to force Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.

Tuesday's talks touched on the Syrian crisis and both countries are opposed to a military intervention, said Egyptian presidential spokesman Yasser Ali. "I presume that there is an understanding from both sides that we have to work together to stop the bleeding in Syria's streets, and the other understanding also regarding the military (intervention) in Syrian scene is not accepted by both countries," he said in English.

Long a bystander in Middle Eastern politics, China has become increasingly active, driven by its need for oil and gas, and its economic importance to the region has ballooned amid Europe's economic woes and the sluggish U.S. recovery. Egypt's economy has been battered by the global economic slowdown and 18 months of political instability, and Morsi is under heavy pressure to attract tourists and investment to put Egyptians back to work.

Revenues from tourism ? one of Egypt's biggest money makers and job sources ? fell 30 percent to $9 billion in 2011, and foreign investment has largely dried up. That has forced the country to seek billions of dollars in assistance from the International Monetary Fund and raised the possibility of a cut in subsidies that keep commodities like fuel and bread cheap for a population of about 82 million, 40 percent of whom live near or below the poverty line.

Chinese tourists are increasingly traveling farther afield to more exotic locales such as Egypt, while Chinese companies have invested in Egyptian manufacturing and infrastructure, having poured an estimated $500 million into the country. Tourism is an area Hu and Morsi identified for cooperation, and the Chinese president also pledged support for a Suez development zone, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.

Morsi leaves Beijing on Thursday to attend the world gathering of self-described nonaligned nations in Iran, the first visit to that country by an Egyptian head of state since relations between them were severed in 1979.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-wary-arab-spring-hosts-egypts-morsi-042257288--finance.html

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FACT CHECK: Anti-Obama film muddy on facts

WASHINGTON (AP) ? "2016: Obama's America," a new conservative film exploring the roots of President Barack Obama's political views, took in $6.2 million to make it one of the highest-grossing movies of last weekend. The film, written and narrated by conservative scholar Dinesh D'Souza, argues that Obama was heavily influenced by what D'Souza calls the "anti-colonial" beliefs of his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan academic who was largely absent from the president's life.

To document that claim, D'Souza travels to Kenya to interview members of Obama's extended family as well as to Hawaii and Indonesia, where Obama grew up. He also cites several actions and policy positions Obama has taken to support the thesis that Obama is ideologically rooted in the Third World and harbors contempt for the country that elected him its first black president.

The assertion that Obama's presidency is an expression of his father's political beliefs, which D'Souza first made in 2010 in his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," is almost entirely subjective and a logical stretch at best.

It's true that Obama's father lived most of his life in Kenya, an African nation once colonized by the British, and that Obama's reverence for his absent father frames his best-selling memoir. D'Souza even sees clues in the book's title: "Notice it says 'Dreams From My Father,' not 'of' my father," D'Souza says.

But it's difficult to see how Obama's political leanings could have been so directly shaped by his father, as D'Souza claims. The elder Obama left his wife and young son, the future president, when Obama was 2 and visited his son only once, when Obama was 10. But D'Souza frames that loss as an event that reinforced rather than weakened the president's ties to his father, who died in a car crash when Obama was in college.

D'Souza interviews Paul Vitz, a New York University psychologist who has studied the impact of absent fathers on children. In Obama's case, Vitz says, the abandonment meant "he has the tension between the Americanism and his Africanism. He himself is an intersection of major political forces in his own psychology."

From there, the evidence D'Souza uses to support his assertion starts to grow thin.

D'Souza says Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, shared his father's left-leaning views. After living in Indonesia for several years, D'Souza said, Dunham sent the younger Obama to live with his grandparents in Hawaii so he would not be influenced by her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian who worked for American oil companies and fought communists as a member of the Indonesian army.

"Ann separates Barry from Lolo's growing pro-Western influence," D'Souza says in the film. Obama has said his mother had sent him back to Hawaii so he would be educated in the United States.

In Hawaii, D'Souza asserts with no evidence, Obama sympathized with native Hawaiians who felt they had been marginalized by the American government when Hawaii was becoming a state. D'Souza also asserts ? again with no evidence ? that Obama had been coached to hold those views at Punahou, the prestigious prep school he attended in Honolulu.

"Oppression studies, if you will. Obama got plenty of that when he was here in Punahou," D'Souza says, standing on the campus.

In Kenya, D'Souza interviews Philip Ochieng, a lifelong friend of the president's father, who claims the elder Obama was "totally anti-colonial." Ochieng also discloses some of his own political views, complaining about U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq and saying the U.S. refuses to "tame" Israel, which he calls a "Trojan horse in the Middle East." D'Souza seems to suggest that if a onetime friend of Obama's late father holds those opinions, so too must the president himself.

D'Souza then goes through a list of actions Obama has taken as president to support his thesis. Many of them don't hold water:

? D'Souza rightly argues that the national debt has risen to $16 trillion under Obama. But he never mentions the explosion of debt that occurred under Obama's predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, nor the 2008 global financial crisis that provoked a shock to the U.S. economy.

? D'Souza says Obama is "weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadists" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not mention that Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the drone strikes that have killed dozens of terrorists in the region.

?D'Souza wrongly claims that Obama wants to return control of the Falkland Islands from Britain to Argentina. The U.S. refused in April to endorse a final declaration on Argentina's claim to the islands at the Summit of the Americas, provoking criticism from other Latin American nations.

?D'Souza says Obama has "done nothing" to impede Iran's nuclear ambitions, despite the severe trade and economic sanctions his administration has imposed on Iran to halt its suspected nuclear program. Obama opposes a near-term military strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, although he says the U.S. will never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

? D'Souza says Obama removed a bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because Churchill represented British colonialism. White House curator William Allman said the bust, which had been on loan, was already scheduled to be returned before Obama took office. Another bust of Churchill is on display in the president's private residence, the White House says.

___

Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bfouhy

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look at campaign arguments and how well they adhere to the facts.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-anti-obama-film-muddy-facts-072153385--politics.html

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Venezuela: Can calls for gun control trump election year divides?

Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and illegal firearms are prevalent. More than 130,000 illegal arms were turned into the state last year as part of a pilot disarmament program.

By Gimena S?nchez,?WOLA / August 27, 2012

A campaign billboard featuring Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez towers over an apartment building in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 21.

Fernando Llano/AP

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? Gimena S?nchez is a contributor of WOLA?s blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. The views expressed are the author's own.

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As in many countries in the Western Hemisphere, a vigorous debate is going on in Venezuela about how to control the possession and use of illegal weapons.? Amid a climate of extreme ideological polarization and varied political agendas, perceptions and misinformation have shaped much of the opinion surrounding the arms debate in Venezuela. Even the number of guns has become a point of contention; opponents to the Chavez government claim that there exist 15 million illegal arms in a country with a total population of 28 million, while government supporters call such claims exaggerations designed to discredit the president and undercut his credibility on the eve of the October Presidential elections. Ideology aside, and whatever the numbers, the sobering fact remains that in 2010, 94 percent of homicides were committed with firearms?36 percent of the victims were youths between the ages of 15 and 28, and the majority were males from the lower economic sectors. Regardless of political preference, it is clear that illegal firearms are killing Venezuelans, and that this is an issue that requires polarization politics to take a back seat and for Venezuelans of all stripes to come together and tackle the problem.

In May 2011, the Chavez administration established the Presidential Commission on Disarmament to tackle the ongoing illegal arms issue and develop public policies that promote disarmament. The commission, which included representatives from government agencies, academics, and civil society, and whose secretariat includes the knowledgeable groups, Red de Apoyo and Centro Gumilla, was tasked with analyzing where the arms were coming from and how legal arms were entering the black market. The commission also sought to bring diverse sectors of society into the discussion by soliciting ideas on how best to the address the problem through legislation and other means.

In 2000, 15 percent of Venezuela?s arms purchases came from the United States. Since the United States banned arm sales to Venezuela, the market has been dominated by Austria and its Glock gun, though Italy and Brazil have gained a larger foothold in recent years. The main issue, however, appears not to be the volume of arms available but who has control over the arms and what they do with them. While an illegal arms trade along Venezuela?s border with Colombia still exists, most arms used in urban homicides are not contraband but arms that entered the country legally and subsequently became illegal.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/bYXAKqbz_e8/Venezuela-Can-calls-for-gun-control-trump-election-year-divides

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American specialty health network - HEALTH, BEAUTY & FITNESS

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Chain restaurants missing out on ethnic menu opportunities, says ...

CHICAGO, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --?Consumers may not have the means to travel the world, but that hasn't dampened their desire to experience new ethnic cuisines. Unfortunately, chain restaurants aren't meeting current consumer demand for new foods and flavors. Only a quarter of consumers polled for a recent Technomic survey say they are satisfied with the availability of ethnic offerings at limited-service (23 percent) and full-service (28 percent) chains, which translates into opportunities for operators to differentiate their menus and gain market share with globally-inspired offerings.

[Related INFOGRAPHIC -- Eating Out: Ethnic Restaurants]

"Authenticity is crucial to the ethnic food and beverage purchasing decision," says Executive Vice President Darren Tristano. "Sixty-five percent of consumers say food that tastes authentic is one of the most important factors in deciding which establishment to visit for ethnic foods and beverages. Operators have an opportunity to create innovative and globally inspired menu items reflected through preparation, taste and flavor.? Consumers also say that dishes prepared by someone from that region are given greater credibility as authentic."

To help operators and others aligned with the foodservice industry more effectively understand consumer behavior, definitions, preferences and attitudes towards ethnic flavors and cuisines, Technomic developed the Ethnic Food & Beverage Consumer Trend Report.

Interesting findings include:

• Three out of four consumers (77 percent) purchase ethnic foods and flavors away from home at least once a month.? The percentage is strongly driven by Asian and Hispanic respondents, with 90 and 88 percent of these consumers, respectively, purchasing ethnic food or flavors away-from-home at least once a month.
• Data indicates that cuisine does not need to be from another country to be considered ethnic; nearly nine out of 10 consumers consider regional U.S. cuisines such as Cajun (89 percent) and Creole (86 percent) cuisines to be ethnic.
• 33 percent of consumers strongly agree that there are many ethnic foods they would like to order at restaurants but are not able to find.
• Southeast Asian flavors are moving into the mainstream with the development of familiar offerings with a flavorful Thai, Vietnamese or Indonesian twist on sauces, dressings and ingredients.

Technomic's Ethnic Food & Beverage Consumer Trend Report examines consumer behavior, attitudes and preferences toward ethnic flavors, foods and beverages based on survey results from 1,500 consumers. The Ethnic Cuisine Trends section provides a comprehensive guide to the trends that continue to shape ethnic flavors and foods. The report also features 20 emerging limited- and full-service restaurants that offer ethnic foods and beverages.

To purchase or learn more about this report please visit Technomic.com or contact one of the individuals listed below.

Contacts

Press Inquiries: Darren Tristano, 312-506-3850, or dtristano@technomic.com
Purchasing Details: Patrick Noone, 312-506-3852, or pnoone@technomic.com
Report Details: Kelly Weikel, 312-506-3830, or kweikel@technomic.com

About Technomic

Technomic provides clients with the facts, insights and consulting support they need to enhance their business strategies, decisions and results. Its services include numerous publications and digital products, as well as proprietary studies and ongoing research on all aspects of the food industry.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110428/CG90692LOGO)

SOURCE Technomic

Source: http://www.foodanddrinkdigital.com/press_releases/chain-restaurants-missing-out-on-ethnic-menu-opportunities-says-technomic

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Generally Adopt the Ideal Legal Search Techniques

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Source: http://www.articledumpster.com/generally-adopt-the-ideal-legal-search-techniques/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=generally-adopt-the-ideal-legal-search-techniques

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