Open Compliance & Ethics Group, a coalition of business and public policy leaders, by the end of the year plans to develop standards on implementing and improving corporate ethics and compliance programs for U.S. corporations. The standards would assist corporate directors, officers and employees in reducing risk, fraud and malfeasance, and in restoring the public’s confidence in the corporate world. OCEG plans to distribute for feedback a draft of the guidelines this summer to 10,000 individuals with such groups as the American Corporate Council Corporation, the Practicing Law Institute and the American Bar Association, organizations that support the OCEG.
The OCEG advisory panel includes Charles Elson, executive director of the Center for Corporate Governance, University of Delaware; Richard Koppes, co-chair of Stanford Law School Executive Education and director of the Investor Responsibility Research Center; Leo C. O’Neill, president, Standard & Poor’s; and Bob Felton, managing partner for corporate governance practice, McKinsey & Co.