Greed has many faces

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: Times said that case “pulled off one of the sweetest deals in business history…by managing to acquire Time Warner with AOL’s inflated stock.” Time Warner agreed to pay securities regulators $300 million and restate three years of financial results to settle civil fraud charges.

Company: Tyco

Year: 2004

Scandal: Former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, who headed the company from 1992 to 2002, was convicted in 2005 of misappropriating more than US$400 million of company funds. Tyco International became synonymous with corporate greed after it was revealed that Kozlowski had used Tyco money for lavish parties and furnishings for his New York apartment.

Amount of money: $400 million

Sequence of events: Under Kozlowski, Tyco grew dramatically through acquisitions and saw its stock price hit a high of $63.21 in 2001. But in 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concluded that Tyco used aggressive accounting for acquisitions to inflate profits, that it had hidden millions in executive compensation. The investigation found that Kozlowski; Mark Swartz, Tyco’s former CFO; and Mark Belnick, the company’s chief legal officer, had taken over $170 million in loans from Tyco without receiving appropriate approval from Tyco’s compensation committee and notifying shareholders. For the most part these loans were taken with low to no interest. The SEC also charged that Kozlowski and Swartz sold seven and a half million shares of Tyco stock for $430 million without telling investors.