U.S. companies with large operations in the United Kingdom have a new layer of compliance complexity to deal with. With the enactment yesterday of the Finance Bill, the nation’s annual omnibus legislation for changes in the tax law, senior accounting officers of large U.K. corporate taxpayers are now required to certify that their accounting systems are adequate for the purposes of accurate tax reporting. And they face personal liability for any “careless or deliberate” failure.

Shades of Sarbanes-Oxley? For sure. more

My favorite business story from last Sunday’s paper?

A New York Times piece on JPMorgan Chase & Co. chairman Jamie Dimon’s governance approach.

The article quotes Dimon describing government relations as the banking company’s “seventh line of business.”

JPMorgan Chase’s governance strategy may stand out within its industry, but a new report on board composition suggests that public policy expertise – and experience – represents an increasingly sought-after directorship competency. more

One.

That’s how many directorship candidates traditionally are presented for interviews to nominating committees of boards of directors. I was startled to learn this during research on the composition and selection processes of Fortune 1,000 boards.

After all, the typical executive search process is rigorous. It involves extensive interviews (not to mention psychological screenings, exhaustive background scrutiny, and reference checks) with three, five, or even more final candidates.

Why do so many directorship searches still boil down to a single candidate being interviewed by current directors? more

Corporate treasurers whose companies use over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives to hedge interest rate, currency, or commodity exposures will want to look closely at reforms to the market now under consideration in Washington. A report issued by the Department of the Treasury titled “Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation,” contains a number of proposed changes to the U.S. financial regulatory system. Among them is “comprehensive regulation of all over-the-counter derivatives.”

Although it seems to have gone pretty much unnoticed among corporate financial types, the proposals would affect more than just banks and financial institutions, says Jiro Okochi, chief executive officer and cofounder of Reval.com, Inc., a provider of derivative risk management and hedge accounting solutions. “Awareness seems low,” Okochi says. “Corporations think it’s all about banks and credit default swaps.” more

Finance departments have used portal technology for a decade or more. It proved a natural for all those pesky questions from employees about compensation, from executives and managers seeking access to financial data, and from customers and suppliers about billing and payment. So here is the question: What does social networking technology bring to portals?

We’re going to find out. IBM is pushing the portal in the cloud as the combination of the classic information portal and Web 2.0 technology, something it will be unveiling in stages over the next year. Microsoft is doing the same.

Gartner confirms the trend in its most recent portal software Magic Quadrant. According to Gartner, “New [portal] entrants provide additional options for enterprises willing to consider open-source and software-as-a-service alternatives for portal functionality. To differentiate their offerings, portal vendors are incorporating support for enterprise mashups and social networking.” IBM is even working with Amazon to enable private cloud-based portals. more