Barnes & Noble: Ethics and Compliance
Barnes & Noble is the second-largest retailer of magazines in America carrying at least 5,500 magazine titles and nearly 1,000 newspapers. This store not only sells books, but has a lounge that you can sit and sip your favorite beverage, read, plug your tablet in, purchase electrical devices and find whatever book you are looking for. They have approximately 27% share of the eBook market and sell three times the eBooks as compared to hard copies on online.
Organization's Financial Environment
As with any major international corporation, Barnes & Noble has extensive ethical procedures that detail everything from acceptable behavior between employees and their interactions with customers to their compliance procedures with the Security and Exchange commission (SEC). Several procedures are in place in order to stay in compliance with the regulations set by the SEC. The senior financial officers and chief executive officers at Barnes & Noble are held responsible for the complete and correct disclosure of the company's financial reports.
Dedicated to the accurate and honest reporting of their financial information, Barnes & Noble stays ready to make the important business decisions that keep it a leader in retail sales. In further compliance with SEC regulations, Barnes & Noble has an audit committee whose main function is to monitor the integrity of the entire financial reporting process. A second responsibility of this committee is to verify the company's internal controls and financial statements. The audit committee also oversees the performance of the company's global internal audit functions, the compliance with regulatory and requirements, as well as to monitor the qualifications and performance of independent auditors (Barnes & Noble. 2010).
While in keeping with SEC regulations, Barnes and Noble also require its employees to abide by the anti-trust laws as they are stated by Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Anti-trust laws are in place to protect the consumer from unethical practices, with the purpose being that the loss of trust and control can have an adverse affect on markets by preventing competitors from engaging in healthy market competition.
Describe procedures your organization has in place to ensure ethical behavior.
Barnes & Noble’s employee handbook has a lot of important information for their employees to learn, understand and follow. In many instances, the information that is supplied is common sense rhetoric that would be found in any corporate employee handbook. As one example, associates are forbidden to speak about any trade of privacy, or allowed to go public with any company data. This also includes information about wages or any type of internal information. Employees who disregard this ethical issue face more than just termination. In some cases, they can be arrested and charged with criminal intent, a penalty that could lead to as much as ten years in prison and fines up to $1 million.
With the launch of their eBook tablets, the Nook, in late 2009, Barnes & Noble has gone to great lengths in recent years to maintain, and even improve upon the public perception of the company. On their website, Barnes and Noble have published a Statement of Ethics, which promises an atmosphere of cultural and ethical honesty. This promise of compliance covers organizational policy and touches on such topics as inappropriate conduct, non-discrimination and conflict of Interest. On the higher corporate, managerial, executive level, there are even sections that cover items like financial integrity, insider trading, fair competition and international trade. In addition to these topics on ethical procedures, the site also offers the organization’s Security and Exchange Commission compliance procedures (Barnes & Noble. 2010).
How Financial Markets Work
The ways in which the financial markets works within the United States has many expressions that can be identified with the term financial markets. Many might know that most of the terms which include the financial markets also go by the names of investment markets, Wall Street, and still yet just the markets. A number of experts yet purely submit to it as the supply market, even though they are only talking about stocks, bonds and supplies. As plain as you see it, this is what the financial markets are normally known for, where money and credit is exchanged in any type of financial transaction with the purpose of helping businesses grow and investors make money.
Principal Sets: As many have learned, that business on an average chooses to take on the structure of a corporation when they need to raise large amounts of investments. Further on in this paper, Team B will demonstrate how Barnes and Noble as a company raise investments using the United States financial markets. In the United States the financial markets interact with three different principal sets known as the borrowers, savers (Investors), and financial institutions.
Borrowers: These are individuals who need money to finance their purchases. This includes businesses that need money to finance their investments or to expand their inventories as well as individuals who borrow money to purchase a new vehicle or a new home.
Savers (Investors): These are people who have money already to invest. These are first and foremost persons who save money for a range of reasons, such as paying a down payment for a home or saving for a return to graduate school. Firms also save when they have surplus cash.
Financial Institutions: The financial institutions and markets that help bring borrowers and savers together. The financial institution that everyone is most likely recognizable with are the commercial banks, which is a financial institution that accepts deposits and makes loans, such as Bank of America or Citibank, where many might have checking accounts. On the other hand, as Team B discuss in the next section, there are many other types of financial institutions that bring together borrowers and savers.
SEC Regulations Compliance
Barnes & Noble must establish policies and processes to make sure that they are complying with the rules and regulations that are set forth by the Security Exchange Commission. Through the use of technology, internal disclosure controls, financial reporting internal control and independent accounting auditors, they verify that the controls are working and are in place. Barnes & Noble is required to submit and post all of the company’s’ Interactive Data files, pursuant to rule 405 of the regulation S-T. Barnes and Nobles files all documents that are registered statements. These documents filed are pursuant to the Security Act and respective data. Once the proxy statement for Barnes and Nobles is studied, the filings show a historical Security Exchange Commission filing listing by category for a variety of reports that are required. Barnes and Nobles uses an independent auditor who expresses an opinion of the organizational audited financial statements to the accounting principles they generally use. Before reporting the process on behalf of the Board of Directors, the Audit committee reviews the finances of the company.
Barnes and Nobles filed an 8-K form with Security Exchange Commission, which were in compliance with regulations in regards to insider trading and Reuter reports. Barnes and Noble has to be really careful in posting, tweeting, commenting or updating their status, because one wrong irresponsible act could have a domino effect of things to be established. The organization has to make every effort to reach people with whom they are sharing information with, so the Security Exchange Commission cautions them by means