Your company has just made its largest acquisition ever and your CEO says that he wants you to have a compliance post-acquisition integration plan on his desk in one week. Where do you begin? Of course, you think about the 2020 FCPA Resource Guide, 2nd edition but you also remember that the established time frames in the enforcement actions involving Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Pfizer Inc. and DS&S and the Halliburton Opinion Release.
While there are time frames listed in these DPAs, they are a guide of timeframes, not a ‘how to’ guide and many compliance professionals struggle with how to perform these post-acquisition compliance integrations. The 2020 Update to the Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs asked the following questions, What has been the company’s process for tracking and remediating misconduct or misconduct risks identified during the due diligence process? What has been the company’s process for implementing compliance policies and procedures, and conducting post- acquisition audits, at newly acquired entities?
Whatever compendium of steps you utilize for post-acquisition integration, they should be taken as soon as practicable.
Three key takeaways:
- Planning is critical in the post-acquisition phase.
- Build upon what you learned in pre-acquisition due diligence.
- You need to be ready to hit the ground running when a transaction closes.
