Breaking the Mould

Latest — Jul 5, 2025

Export Controls and the Illusion of Control

There are few topics less likely to provoke an excited flutter in the corporate heart than export controls. Until recently, the subject was comfortably ignored by most compliance teams, particularly in Europe, where it was filed somewhere between archiving policy and rules on stapler procurement. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

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Do More With Less: Why Compliance Chiefs Shall Embrace Efficiency.

If you’ve spent any time in a large corporation, there are certain things you’ll know instinctively. The office printer never works. Business review decks always have too many slides. And someone, somewhere, is muttering the immortal words: “Do more with less.” Nowhere is this mantra more fervently recited

Compliance Chiefs’ Reality Check: 2025 WSJ CCO Council Summit Takeaways

This year’s Wall Street Journal Chief Compliance Officer Summit in London was a rare moment to take stock of the regulatory whirlwind sweeping across industries. Between catching up with fellow compliance leaders and enjoying some classic networking, the real question lingered—what’s keeping compliance chiefs awake at night?

The Case for Prevention

Transparency International estimates that the annual cost of corruption, in the form of bribery and stolen money, amounts to a staggering $3.6 trillion[i]. According to UK Finance’s 2024 Fraud Report, £1.17 billion was lost to fraud in 2023[ii]. It’s fair to ask why, with

AI isn’t magic. But it can help Compliance Professionals. A lot.

Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022, the AI hype has taken over the world. Even law firms (the most tech-conservative bunch I can think of) moved to adopt GenAI in their day-to-day work to enhance productivity and efficiency. The truth is that AI, or more precisely,

What Compliance Leaders Can Learn from Miss Taylor Swift?

Last Saturday, I was among the lucky ones who got a chance to attend Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert in Edinburgh. Needless to say, it was a show like no other. The atmosphere, energy, and emotions among the 73,000 attendees on that Saturday night were just incredible.

Revisiting Sanctions Compliance

The 14th EU Sanctions package is expected to focus heavily on enforcement and combating sanctions evasion. It's time for businesses trading internationally to revisit their sanctions compliance. These are the key issues dominating compliance teams' agendas. Banks With a recent Russia sanctions enforcement push, banks increasingly find

Do Internal Investigations Even Matter? Oh Yes, They do!

With the endless chain of corporate scandals and heightened scrutiny of individual, often leadership misconduct, internal investigations have recently garnered significant attention from the general public and within the corporate world. Let’s talk about what internal investigations are and aren’t and how they can be done better. Is

Let’s Talk About Performance Metrics

Following the first significant bribery and corruption scandals of the early 2000s, companies started devoting more attention to the growing US FCPA exposure and investing in their prevention and detection capabilities—from introducing codes of conduct to employee training and communication to monitoring dealings with public officials to establishing ethics

The “Three Lines of Defence” model is dead. Long live 3LoD.

Carillion, Greensill, Wirecard (and many more corporate and audit scandals on both sides of the Atlantic) have shown that the traditional “Three Lines of Defence” (3LoD) model of risk and compliance does not necessarily fit the current business and regulatory environment. In fact, it never did. Let’s talk about

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Breaking the Mould

Redefining Compliance. I help my readers navigate the integrity and compliance landscape by highlighting key emerging risks and opportunities. Subscribe to my newsletter!

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