In this episode, I visit with Don Stern, Managing Director of Corporate Monitoring & Consulting Services. We explore how to go about assessing ethics and compliance in the mergers and acquisition (M&A) context and  the impact that M&A has on both the acquired entity and the acquirer. Stern began by noting the inherent risk in the entire M&A process. Yet,  the culture perspective is not often considered in the pre-acquisition phase. Stern believes companies are making a big mistake in doing so. Companies spend huge amounts of See more +

In this episode, I visit with Don Stern, Managing Director of Corporate Monitoring & Consulting Services. We explore how to go about assessing ethics and compliance in the mergers and acquisition (M&A) context and  the impact that M&A has on both the acquired entity and the acquirer. Stern began by noting the inherent risk in the entire M&A process. Yet,  the culture perspective is not often considered in the pre-acquisition phase. Stern believes companies are making a big mistake in doing so. Companies spend huge amounts of resources to hire lawyers, investment bankers, accountants for the pre-acquisition phase. They scrub the financials, look at income and look at revenues and expenses. Yet they often spend almost no time in looking at issues like the ethical culture of the company to be acquired. Stern stated, “I’ve never quite understood that everyone understands the risk of any acquisition. That the company picture may not work out quite as rosy as was expected. They may be some synergies that were expected from an expense point of view that don’t quite work out.” See less -