Ethics Governance
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MCI's Ethics Officer (ethikos) MCI's Ethics Officer (ethikos) March/April 2004 - By Andrew W. Singer. MCI’s New Ethics Officer Has A ‘Seat At The Table’Nancy Higgins is a veteran ethics officer who has worked at companies like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. Today she serves at a firm that "committed what appears to be the largest accounting fraud in history."That company is MCI, formerly WorldCom. Together with Enron, Arthur Andersen, and a few others, it was a leading miscreant in the recent corporate scandals.According to the Breeden Report, WorldCom’s Bernard Ebbers "was allowed nearly imperial reign over the affairs of the company." The former CEO secured some $400 million in ‘loans’ from shareholders, loans that are "unlikely ever to be repaid." In the end, "approximately $200 billion in shareholder value was first created, and then destroyed." Today MCI is in bankruptcy, although it is expected to emerge soon.In October 2003, Higgins became the firm’s Executive Vice President of Ethics and Business Conduct. Asked how she aims to restore trust in an employee base that is arguably battle-scarred and cynical, she answers, "I don’t believe we have cynical employees." Most employees, in fact, were "horrified and embarrassed about what happened at WorldCom."‘Restoring trust’The aforementioned report, "Restoring Trust: On Corporate Governance For The Future of MCI, Inc," was prepared by former SEC Chairman Richard C. Breeden for the U.S. District Court judge overseeing MCI’s bankruptcy. Released in August 2003, it notes:"WorldCom was then, and is today, an enormous global company with more than 55,000 employees and over 20 million individual and corporate customers who freely choose its services as a competitor. After exhaustive multiple investigations, the fraudulent accounting activities seem to have involved fewer than 100 persons out of the entire employee base."Those "100 persons" are now gone from the company, observes Higgins, in a recent interview with ethikos. Indeed, people in MCI company headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia, most of whom came from the MCI part of the business (as opposed to the WorldCom side—Mississippi-based WorldCom acquired MCI in 1998), now refer to the period when they came under WorldCom’s control as that time when they were "abducted by aliens."That said, there is now a concentration on ethics and compliance at MCI as is seen at few other companies. Full Article: http://www.singerpubs.com/ethikos/html/mci.html |
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2006 Ethics-Governance.com |
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