Assessing Ethics and Compliance in M&A-Episode 5

Over this series, I have visited with Eric Feldman, Senior Vice President, Don Stern, Managing Director of Corporate Monitoring & Consulting Services, and Rod Grandon, Managing Director of Government Services, from Affiliated Monitors, Inc., (AMI) who is the sponsor of this series. In it, we explore how to go about assessing ethics and compliance in the mergers and acquisition (M&A) context. In this fifth and concluding episode I visit with Stern to tie together how an independent integrity monitor can benefit the entire M&A process. 

In this episode we discuss:

1. At what point in the M&A process would it be helpful for a company to arrange for an independent, third-party assessment of a company’s compliance and ethics program and ethical culture?
2. What specific elements of the M&A would such an independent assessment review, and how?
3. Can you provide some specific examples where an independent assessment may have helped mitigate ethical problems deriving from an M&A further down the road?