M&A Due Diligence: How to Uncover Corruption

Corporate balance sheets in the United States currently show an excess of cash. And to make earnings-conscious shareholders happy, many corporate managers will funnel that cash into more merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity. But M&A is never without risk, warn the authors of this article. And they caution managers that their M&A due diligence should not overlook the existence of possible corruption and bribery in an acquired company. The authors also include a handy checklist to help corporate managers find possible problems when examining a target company. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.