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Baker McKenzie has released its latest report, Taking Center Stage: The Rise and Rise of M&A Compliance Due Diligence. Based on a survey of more than 300 corporate leaders and legal advisers who handle transactions, along with insight from Baker McKenzie compliance, antitrust and corporate partners, the report assesses the challenges and risks that regional and multinational organizations face in relation to compliance due diligence (CDD) across both M&A and JVs.

Pre-transactional CDD encompasses a range of issues, including antitrust, employment, money laundering, data privacy, cybersecurity, bribery and corruption, sanctions, environmental and supply chain compliance. Along with commercial, financial and tax and traditional legal due diligence, CDD should be — and increasingly is — one of the key pillars of any deal.

However, as the findings of this study show, good intentions and best practice can be quite a distance apart, and many multinational businesses are still accepting unnecessarily high levels of risk through inadequate or sometimes even non-existent pre-acquisition CDD and post-acquisition compliance integration.

In this report, we explore both these current “blind spots” and examine global CDD trends and emerging risks.

As always, our team is on hand to help you with any compliance queries and would be happy to provide you with more detail, or discuss any questions.

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Author

Widge Devaney is a partner in the Firm's North America Litigation group in New York, Chair of the North American Government Enforcement Practice and Co-Chair of the Global Compliance and Investigations Group. Since 2011, Mr. Devaney has been listed in New York Metro Super Lawyers in the Criminal Defense: White Collar category. Mr. Devaney is co-chair of the ABA's Transnational Crime Subcommittee, and an officer of the IBA's Business Crime Committee. He previously served on the Criminal Justice Act Panel for the Southern District of New York, representing indigent clients in federal criminal matters. Mr. Devaney served as law clerk to the Honorable Oliver Gasch on the US District Court for the District of Columbia from 1993 to 1994.

Author

Andrew Martin is the Managing Principal and co-head of the M&A Practice Group in Singapore. He is recognised as a leading lawyer by legal directories such as Chambers Asia Pacific and Legal 500. He trained and initially worked in England, followed by several years in Hong Kong and Australia before settling in Singapore in 2002.

Author

Joanna Ludlam is a partner in the Dispute Resolution team in Baker McKenzie's London office, where she leads the market-leading Regulatory, Public & Media law team and also co-leads the office's Compliance & Investigations Practice Group. At an international level, she co-chairs the Firm's Global Compliance & Investigations Steering Committee. In 2016, Joanna was named as one of The Lawyer’s “Hot 100” for her practice, and is recognised by Legal 500 and Chambers & Partners.