Kudos to the creative minds at Oversight Systems who developed a Web site that “awards” truly amazing instances of corporate fraud.

The tales are by turns juicy, ridiculous, depressing, and instructive (from a fraud management and prevention perspective): “This leading man used a corporate card to make over $4,000 in purchases from Victoria’s Secret,” reads the entry for one award. “The soft-hearted romantic was caught cheating by his company and then subsequently busted for two-timing his wife.”

Ouch.

Other awards honor fraudsters who:

• Rang up over $3,400 in charges to a psychic hotline on a company credit card;

• Used his company card to book his family of five on a $40,000 Mediterranean cruise; and

• Purchased international airline tickets on his credit card, filed for reimbursement from his company, exchanged those tickets for airline credit, and then (deep breath) sold the airline credit on eBay.

There are many more … ###

If you’ve been focusing more on your firm’s investment policies, you’re not alone. The battering investors have taken in the stock market – the S&P 500 is finally inching back to levels last seen in 2002 – has prompted many institutional investors to examine just where they’re placing their money. According to the annual review by Pensions & Investments, the funded status of the 100 largest pension plans slid 30 percent in 2008, eliminating the past 5 years’ gains. more

In a March speech, Zhou Ziaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, floated the notion of a single international reserve currency, “that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run.” (A reserve currency is maintained by central banks so that they can invest in and trade with other countries and manage the value of their own currency.)

Some analysts viewed the comments as little more than China stirring up trouble and flexing their growing economic clout. And, self-interest probably was one factor behind the idea, as this article from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation points out. The Chinese, along with others around the globe, worry whether President Obama’s stimulus plan will prompt inflation, devaluing the greenbacks China holds. That would also increase the value of the yuan, cutting into China’s exports. more

This spring has seen corporate performance management (CPM) move squarely into the cloud, propelled by Host Analytics, a player that didn’t even find a place as a niche player or challenger among the quadrants (Niche, Challengers, Visionaries, Leaders) of the latest Gartner CPM Magic Quadrant report. However, the research firm did give a shout-out in the report to Host and competitor Adaptive Planning as CPM SaaS players.

According to Gartner, the market for CPM hit $1.8 billion in license and maintenance revenue in 2007, representing 19 percent year-on-year growth. Driving the growth is the replacement of spreadsheets for CPM by products with built-in analytics. Maybe, but spreadsheets remain the preferred CPM tool by the actual users, and a CPM product that doesn’t export its data to Excel is doomed. You can find the Gartner report here. more