CORONA, COMPLIANCE AND CONTROL – HOW TO PREVENT THAT TODAY’S COVID-19 CRISIS CAUSES TOMORROW’S COMPLIANCE CRISIS

In the pandemic, many undertakings must focus on survival and need to maintain liquidity, which demands ongoing earnings and control of costs.

Ongoing earnings are hard to achieve in a global economic downturn. No doubt that the ubiquitous and ever-present legal risks associated with being in the business of doing business have significantly risen in all undertakings during the past months.

On the cost side, senior management may now feel tempted to suspend all expenditures which are not immediately contributing to the bottom line. Of all possible cost savings, compliance expenditures would seem a bad choice.

Considering the temporary nature of the pandemic, all undertakings will soon gear-up their operations and try to get back into a “business as usual” mode. This can successfully be achieved, if discipline is maintained during the crisis, including compliance discipline. And this can only be achieved, if the compliance function remains fully operative and effective. Getting compliance wrong during the crisis exposes undertakings to high legal risk during the critical phase of ramping up the business.

The full article is available here.

Contact the authors:
Daniel Lucien Bühr
Adam El-Hakim