Day 6 of One Month to More Effective Compliance for Business Ventures

The compliance component of your mergers and acquisition regime should begin with a preliminary pre-acquisition assessment of risk. Such an early assessment will inform the transaction research and evaluation phases. This could include an objective view of the risks faced and the level of risk exposure, such as best/worst case scenarios. A pre-acquisition risk assessment could also be used as a “lens through which to view the feasibility of the business strategy” and help to value the potential target.

The next step is to develop the risk assessment as a base document. From this document, you should be able to prepare a focused series of queries and requests to be obtained from the target company. Thereafter, company management can use this pre-acquisition risk assessment to attain what might be required in the way of integration, post-acquisition. It would also help to inform how the corporate and business functions may be affected. It should also assist in planning for timing and anticipation of the overall expenses involved in post-acquisition integration. These costs are not insignificant and they should be thoroughly evaluated in the decision-making calculus.

Next is a five-step process on how to plan and execute a strategy to perform pre-acquisition due diligence in the M&A context.

1. Establish a point of contact. Here you need to determine one point of contact that you can liaise with throughout the process. Typically, this would be the target’s Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) if the company is large enough to have full time position.
2. Collect relevant documents. Obtain a detailed list of sales going back 3-5 years, broken out by country and, if possible, obtain a further breakdown by product and/or services; all Joint Venture (JV) contracts, due diligence on JVs and other third party business partners; the travel and entertainment records of the acquisition target company’s top sales personnel in high risk countries; internal audit reports and other relevant documents. You do not need to investigate de minimis sales amounts but focus your compliance due diligence inquiry on high sales volumes in high-risk countries. If the acquisition target company uses a sales model of third parties, obtain a complete list. It should be broken out by country and amount of commission paid. Review all underlying due diligence on these foreign business representatives, their contracts and how they were managed after the contract was executed; your focus should be on large commissions in high risk countries.
3. Review the compliance and ethics mission and goals. Here you need to review the Code of Conduct or other foundational documents a target has to gain some insight into what they publicly espouse.
4. Review the seven elements of an effective compliance program as listed below: 

1. Oversight and operational structure of the compliance program. Here you should assess the role of board, CCO and if there is one, the compliance committee. Regarding the CCO, you need to look at their reporting and access - is it independent within the overall structure of the company? Also, what are the resources dedicated to the compliance program including a review of personnel, the budget and overall resources? Review high-risk geographic areas where your company and the acquisition target company do business. If there is overlap, seek out your own sales and operational people and ask them what compliance issues are prevalent in those geographic areas. If there are compliance issues that your company faces, then the target probably faces them as well.
2. Policies/Procedures, Code of Conduct. In this analysis you should identify industry practices and legal standards that may exist for the target company. You need to review how the compliance policies and procedures were developed and determine the review cycles, if any. Lastly, you need to know how everything is distributed and what the enforcement mechanisms for compliance policies are. Additionally you need to validate, with Human Resources (HR), if there have been terminations or disciplines relating to compliance.
3. Education, training and communication. Here you need to review the compliance training process, as it exists in the company, both the formal and the informal. You should ask questions, such as “What are the plans and schedules for compliance training?” Next determine if the training material itself is fit for its intended purpose, including both internal and external training for third parties. You should also evaluate the training delivery channels, for example is the compliance training delivered live, online, or through video? Finally, assess whether the company has updated their training based on changing of laws. You will need to interview the acquisition target company personnel responsible for its compliance program to garner a full understanding of how they view their program. Some of the discussions that you may wish to engage in include visiting with the target company’s General Counsel (GC), its Vice President (VP) of sales and head of internal audit regarding all corruption risks. You should also delve into the target’s compliance efforts, and any other corruption-related issues that may have surfaced.
4. Monitoring and auditing. Under this section you need to review both the internal audit plan and methodology used regarding any compliance audits. A couple of key points are (1) is it consistent over a period of time and (2) what is the audit frequency? You should also try and judge whether the audit is truly independent or if there was manipulation by the business unit(s). You will need to review the travel and entertainment records of the acquisition target company’s top sales personnel in high-risk countries. You should retain a forensic auditing firm to assist you with this effort. Use the resources of your own company personnel to find out what is reasonable for travel and entertainment in the same high-risk countries which your company does business.
5. Reporting. What is the company’s system for reporting violations or allegations of violations? Is the reporting system anonymous? From there you need to  turn to who does the investigations to determine how are they conducted? A key here, as well as something to keep in mind throughout the process, is the adequacy of record keeping by the target.
6. Response to detected violations. This review is to determine management’s response to detected violations. What is the remediation that has occurred and what corrective action has been taken to prevent future, similar violations? Has there been any internal enforcement and discipline of compliance policies if there were violations? Lastly, what are the disclosure procedures to let the relevant regulatory or other authorities know about any violations and the responses thereto? Further, you may be required to self-disclose any FCPA violations that you discover. There may be other reporting issues in the M&A context such as any statutory obligations to disclose violations of any anti-bribery or anti-corruption laws in the jurisdiction(s) in question; what effect will disclosure have on the target’s value or the purchase price that your company is willing to offer?
7. Enforcement Practices/Disciplinary Actions. Under this analysis, you need to see if there was any discipline delivered up to and including termination. If remedial measures were put in place, how were they distributed throughout the company and were they understood by employees?

5. Periodically evaluate the M&A review procedures’ effectiveness benchmarked against any legal proceedings, anti-corruption enforcement actions, Opinion Releases or other relevant information. 

Mike Volkov has noted there are multiple red flags which could be raised in this process, which would warrant further investigation. They include if the target has ineffective compliance program elements in their compliance program or if there were frequent breach of policies and procedures. Obviously, a target which is in financial difficulty would bear closer scrutiny. Structurally, if the company did not have a formal ethics and compliance committee at the senior management or Board of Directors level, this could present issues. From the CCO perspective, if the position did not have Board access, CEO access or if there were not regular reports to the Board, it could present an issue for compliance. Conversely if there were frequent requests to waive policies, management over-ride of compliance controls or no consistent consequence management for violations; it could present clear red flags for further investigation.

Three Key Takeaways

1. The results of your pre-acquisition due diligence will inform your post-acquisition integration and remediation going forward.
2. Periodically review your M&A due diligence protocol.
3. If red flags appear in pre-acquisition due diligence, they should be cleared. 

This month’s podcast series is sponsored by Michael Volkov and The Volkov Law Group.  The Volkov Law Group is a premier law firm specializing in corporate ethics and compliance, internal investigations and white collar defense.  For more information and to discuss practical solutions to compliance and enforcement issues, email Michael Volkov at [e-mail] or check out www.volkovlaw.com.