Crisis Recovery by Corporate Investigation

Business organizations suspected of serious misconduct often hire specialist corporate investigators drawn from the legal and financial services sectors to review suspicions and allegations. In such cases the specialist investigators are required to submit detailed reports making recommendations in terms of previous shortcomings and future conduct. Those recommendations implicitly tend to address recovery by suggesting control mechanisms that can prevent misconduct in the future—such recommendations are analyzed here. International practice examples researched for this chapter include corporate investigations conducted by Clifford Chance, Sands, Smith, PwC, and various public and state auditors. The typical perspective in corporate investigation reports is that wrongdoing has occurred that needs to be corrected, although no apparent violation of the legal license to operate has occurred. Here, the authors extend this anticipated construct to incorporate the social license, with professional perception, policy and practice scrutinized and challenged.