The cross-border supply chain finance market space for companies employing over 500 employees and which are domiciled in the UK, France and Germany is estimated to be more than €460bn, or about $646bn, according to Demica's latest research report.

The National Council of Chain Restaurants is urging repeal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), claiming it is disastrously costly for the restaurant industry, commodity prices and the food supply chain. The lobbying group released a 32-page report, which can be read in its entirety at http://www.NCCR.net.

The average size of each pharmaceutical theft incident in U.S. so far in 2012 has been about $120,000. Compare that to just four years ago, in 2009, when the average incident resulted in losses of about $4m. That is an astonishing reduction of more than 30 times in just four years. Furthermore, the number of incidents during the same period has been cut in half. What is the cause of this phenomenal success?

Although the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been in effect for 35 years as of Dec. 19, many companies still have a long way to go in complying with it. Indeed, 44.6 percent of professionals say either that their companies are not making improvements to prevent and detect corrupt activity or that they don't know if their company is doing so, according to a survey by Deloitte.

DHL has expanded its GOGREEN environmental services with two new carbon-reporting tools.

Wal-Mart Stores reported that its investigation into violations of a federal anti-bribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer's most important international markets.

A ring of Canadian thieves who were caught with 30,700 stolen payment-card numbers is providing a view inside the process of tampering with PIN pads - and it's not pretty. On November 9, Toronto police said a five-man gang had tens of thousands of stolen card numbers on PCs and USB thumb-drives, along with at least a dozen stolen POS devices.