M&A Due Diligence: How to Uncover Corruption

Abstract

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. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.