Corporate America has stumbled like never before. From crimes to financial blunders, from failures of corporate governance to breakdowns in compliance procedures, the events of this decade have redefined the role and power of the business world. Starting from the collapse of Enron and Worldcom, and now appearing as a debacle spreading across the financial and banking industry in a nearly unprecedented calamity, the business decisions and disasters in recent years are the topics everyone talks about, but few understand.

Kurt Eichenwald, a twenty-year veteran of The New York Times, has spent his career uncovering fraud and delving into the financial follies of business, explaining in astonishing clarity where American business slipped up and where we should go from here. His is an analysis that helps us understand the impact of corporate scandals on world markets, on employees, on customers, on shareholders and on public confidence.

A three time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Eichenwald is one of America's most respected business journalists. He has twice won the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors, for his articles on Corporate America.

A New York Times bestselling author, Eichenwald wrote The Informant, about a price-fixing scandal at Archer Daniels Midland, which has since become a movie starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Eichenwald is also the author of Conspiracy of Fools, the definitive book on the Enron collapse; it, too, is headed to the silver screen as a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Both books are widely considered masterpieces of investigative journalism, and Eichenwald has won numerous book awards for his work. He is also the author of Conspiracy of Fools, which is considered to be the definitive account of the Enron scandal.

PLAYING DEFENSE: Protecting a Company from Corporate Scandal

Any company can be struck by the trauma of a corporate scandal. In this instructive and essential speech, Kurt Eichenwald details how scandals emerge even at companies dedicated to integrity. Targeted at senior executives, compliance officers, corporate lawyers and boards of directors, Eichenwald lays bare the errors and missteps that led to specific corporate scandals in the past, making it clear that the path to avoiding such problems involves far more than adopting a system of ethics rules. He then provides the advice, based on two decades of covering such scandals, that will help any company decrease the risk of these kinds of damaging corporate events, information that is critical to any business in a modern age of public scrutiny and government regulation. Multiple companies -- including such giants as the American Express Company, General Electric, and innumerable others -- have already brought in Eichenwald to provide this information to top officers and directors.

The Collapse: America's long journey to its worst financial crisis in decades, what it means for companies and the country, and where we go from here.

It was the cataclysm that no one saw coming, a financial debacle that destroyed Wall Street and transformed capitalism with one of the greatest government interventions in history. But what led to the catastrophe? Could we have seen it coming? And, most important, is it going to get worse, or happen again. Eichenwald answers those questions with a lively look at the modern history of Wall Street, government and the investing world, a toxic stew of recklessness that made the debacle inevitable. Tracing the history from the financial scandals of the 1970's, through the corporate takeover and dotcom booms, to the accounting scandals of the early 21st century at companies like Enron and Worldcom, and finally, to the mortgage mania that pushed the American economy to the precipice of a credit meltdown, he lays bare how the recent financial trauma was the product of decades of foolishness and failure, and explores what corporate executives, government officials and investors must do to avoid repeating this sordid history -- particularly with warning signs emerging of the next debacle to come.

Corporate Scandal in the Age of Madoff and Enron: What can honest companies learn from the crooks?

The wave of corporate crime, it seems, is always with us. Every generation has its wave of business thieves and scoundrels, but in the last decade, a new strain of corporate scandal has emerged, one that has felled massive corporations and prominent investment funds. What does this mean for the honest companies? What do corporate executives, compliance officers, accountants and the like need to watch out for to protect their businesses? In an enlightening - and sometimes maddening and humorous - Kurt Eichenwald dissects some of the most prominent scandals of the day, providing the analysis and insight that show the lessons that every corporation must learn. From Washington to Wall Street, Eichenwald talks about the recent market debacles and extracts valuable lessons for investors, business people and corporations. His bottom line: good compliance and good corporate governance make good business.

The Informant: The Whistleblower, the FBI and the stakes behind America's most astonishing corporate criminal case.

Kurt Eichenwald's book, The Informant, takes readers deep inside an unparalleled criminal investigation - one so unprecedented that Hollywood has made his book into a feature film, starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. This is the story of Mark Whitacre, the highest ranking corporate executive to ever serve as a cooperating witness for the FBI. In a lively and exciting speech, Eichenwald tells the tale of the criminal investigation of the Archer Daniels Midland Company, one set in motion by Whitacre. Despite his unprecedented cooperation, Whitacre was a man of enormous secrets that in the end almost derailed the entire case. In telling this story, Eichenwald shows some of the undercover FBI videos and plays some of the secret tape recordings that allow the audience to hear and see the crimes as they take place. But this is not simply a story: Eichenwald uses the details of The Informant to spell out lessons for corporations and other institutions about how to avoid behaviors that could place them in the cross-hairs of federal prosecutors. And he also tells the inspiring story of Whitacre himself, who, after a prison term, turned his life around and has now become a prominent corporate executive.

Read Kurt Eichenwald's New York Times article, Big Paychecks Are Exhibit A at C.E.O. Trials

Read Kurt Eichenwald's New York Times article, Economy & Business; After a Boom, There Will Be Scandal. Count on It.

Read Kurt Eichenwald's New York Times article, HIDDEN INTEREST -- A special report; When Physicians Double as Entrepreneurs

Read Kurt Eichenwald's New York Times article, He Blew the Whistle, And Health Giants Quaked