Privately held companies are voluntarily adding more scrutiny, as well. In
a recent survey that drew responses from 1400 CFOs in such businesses, 58
percent said they are responding to new corporate-governance standards. Of
those, 36 percent are creating or expanding internal auditing, according to
Robert HALF management Resources. An American company with $3 billion to $4
billion in revenue typically has about 16 internal auditors. The job is often a
training ground for future management positions, but those who stay in the field
and become directors earn an average of just under $100,000. The IIA offers
certification for internal auditors, but many firms do not require it.
The recent string of corporate scandals provided a rude awakening to the
importance of these internal checks. In the case of WorldCom, it was internal
auditor Cynthia Cooper who blew the whistle on the company for inflating profits
by $3.8 billion. She didn’t intend to be a hero, she said to Time magazine when
it named her one of its Persons of the Year. She was just doing her job.
Chief constables had disapproved of the use of league tables. They
complained that they provoked unfair criticism because they did not compare like
with like. Mr. Denham said the graphs were easier to comprehend than tables. “As
people get familiar” with this type of graphical presentation they will realize
it contains a lot of data that can be understood after an initial glance. “ The
spidergrams are based on five indicators: reducing crime, investigation crime,
public safety, deployment of resources and the view of a focus group of local
citizens.
If the wind becomes gusty after a period of calm, you should seek shelter.
The sky needs careful watching too. Gradual darkening and “boiling” clouds
should quicken your pace. Lightening and thunder are common enough storm
indicators, but few people realize that the brightness of the lightening is not
nearly as important as the number of lightning flashes. The signs of an oncoming
storm are many, and a person’s life may depend on his ability to interpret
them,
主题句也可能在段落当中:
From one perspective, this huge customer base represents a hair-raising
social liability. Surgical and hospital costs fro regular heart transplants run
as high as $500,000. these procedures haven’t burdened the medical system so far
– but only because the supply of transplantable hearts has been limited to about
2000 a year. Abiomed plans to price its heart between $75000 and $10000
initially, and with volume production, the price could fall as low as $10000.
However, even at the lower price, artificial hearts are an issue that will lead
into moral quicksands, says medical ethicist David Steinberg of the Lahey Clinic
in Burlington, Mass. What happens, Steinberg muses, “if heart replacement – and
intervention directly and visibly linked to who will live and who will
die—becomes available only to those who can afford it?
