This blog takes no position on the malpractice allegations by HSBC that its law firm, Troutman Sanders, dropped the ball on its due diligence of a borrower who ended up costing the bank $75 million when the borrower put fake securities up as collateral. You can read about the lawsuit here and here.
Continue Reading Avoiding Due Diligence Failure: Follow Up on All Red Flags
Due Diligence for Employees and Small Businesses: Turnaround is Fair Play
One of the biggest misconceptions about due diligence is that it is a one-way street. People assume that either they are scrutinized or doing the scrutinizing, but never the twain shall meet. But this shouldn’t always be the case. In some instances, the person under the microscope also has a responsibility to make sure that they subject the other party to thorough due diligence.
Continue Reading Due Diligence for Employees and Small Businesses: Turnaround is Fair Play
In Plain Sight: Corporations and Public Records
Clients are often surprised to learn how much corporate information is on the public record. Of course, public companies are forced to disclose a lot more data than private ones, but it’s still possible to learn about private companies using smart and thorough public records searches. And there’s more to learn than just what assets a company holds.
Continue Reading In Plain Sight: Corporations and Public Records
Due Diligence For Current Employees
Companies are saving recruiting and advertising costs by hiring from within. But they still need to invest in due diligence and make sure that internal promotions are vetted with the same rigor as external hires.
We’ve written before about the challenges of hiring in our article “Hiring Due Diligence Should Include an Attitude Check
Sorting and Unsorting Facts
Context matters. We know this instinctively, and yet somehow we forget. We still tend to assume that facts live in their own separate bubbles. So when we research and analyze, we warily keep our findings in separate categories—information on person A separate from information on person B, which are both separate from facts uncovered
New Employee Character Checks: A Gut Check is Not Enough
You have an opening in your company. You get a slew of resumes for the position, you interview a number of candidates, and then you finally narrow it down to two people: One has experience that’s right on the mark, but during the interview you had glimpses of an attitude that might not mesh with
Fire your accountant, financial advisor and lawyer too?
A thought-provoking column in the Wall Street Journal here that argues in favor of routine changes of auditors got me thinking.
If we should change our auditors on the grounds that they get too close to us and are afraid to displease us for fear of losing our business, why shouldn’t the same thing apply
World on a String
The world is getting smaller in many ways, including for fact finders looking to get information about companies.
Sometimes, the company across the street will file more information about itself halfway around the world than it will in its own jurisdiction. With a computer or a good person on the ground far away, the information
Apple’s Directors in Focus
Now that Steve Jobs is gone, attention turns to Apple’s Board of Directors (1), a group that’s been criticized in the past for being too deferential to Jobs, as made clear in this Wall Street Journal Story.
Steve Jobs was a business genius, but are these directors good at doing their jobs to inform shareholders
The Silence of the Communicators
Apple, Google and Amazon are in the communications business, but their leaders all need to take some courses at Hamburger University to learn how to communicate with their customers.
Any trial lawyer or investigator will tell you that WHEN something happens can be at least as important as the event itself.
Take the responses to