Here’s how Bank of America Chief Risk Officer Bruce Thompson has spent his past 45 days: hunkered down in crisis-response mode with a team of 15 to 20 senior colleagues and Booz Allen Hamilton consultants. The work consists of pouring over several gigabytes of electronic documents that might be in the possession of WikiLeaks, which might release what the WikiLeaks director describes as evidence of corrupt behavior.

Chances are you know this already. Business and privacy pundits as well as other interested experts have been squawking about this looming threat since Bank of America’s stock dropped more than 3 percent last November in the wake of the WikiLeaks director claiming that his organization could take down a “major American bank” (which, most agree, refers to Bank of America).

Like too many conversations in our country right now, the arguments over WikiLeaks’ impact on business sound highly reactive and hover at the surface of a deeper issue. This deeper issue, the redefining of public and private information, is what risk managers should consider. more

If Hollywood can make sequels to movies, why can’t I? This article is the sequel to my previously published “Can Accountants Grow the Beans, Too?” article.

Here is an edited excerpt to an e-mail to me from an accountant I have known for years. His name will remain anonymous for his own protection. more

The Beyond Budgeting Round Table (BBRT) implementation conference in Houston this week offered a load of practical information, which I will share in the coming weeks. One of the key discussions related to the challenges of managing change.

On that note, I will leave you with some food for thought from my current book, in this first installation of “Future Ready Friday”:

Change is the problem, but we cannot deal with change by suppressing it or pretending it does not exist. The only way forward is to accept it and get good at dealing with it. ###

The Internet of Things has the potential to change our businesses and our lives as much as or possibly more than today’s Internet. It has been a long time in coming, maybe since the advent of bar codes but certainly since the development of RFID tags.

Among the recognized thought leaders is McKinsey. You can check out a piece they posted in March here. IBM has a clever 5-minute video that introduces it here.

The Internet of Things is another aspect of the digital transformation of the world. IBM has given it the Smarter Planet label. Others call it the global digital nervous system. It is the collection of devices, phones, computers, sensors, and more that are continuously communicating digitized information. And once that information is digitized, we can begin to do something with it. What kind of information do you need to advance your business objectives? more

The U.S. corporate tax rate provides an incentive for companies to keep moneys earned outside the U.S., well, outside the U.S., according to a recent survey of more than 800 corporate finance folks by the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP). Slightly more than one-fourth of respondents say that “excessive U.S. corporate tax discourages their organization from bringing cash back to the U.S. and using it to invest in corporate growth,” the AFP said in a statement.

What’s more, while those in favor of the current tax rate on repatriated earnings say that the tax keeps companies from investing in their operations outside the U.S., that’s really not the case, survey participants said. Two-thirds said that the tax on repatriated earnings has little or no influence on their firms’ decisions to invest and operate outside the U.S. more