Category Archives: GoodBlog

In many circles it is widely held that business and regulation are polar opposites: the latter restraining the former to prevent free enterprise and economic growth. What is less widely acknowledged perhaps is that often it is not regulation per se that hampers business, but bad regulation. Good regulation, in fact, can be welcomed by…

Breaching regulations is an expensive business as Volkswagen has discovered. Within hours of the revelation going public, the company had lost a fifth of its market value, its managers faced criminal charges and several billion dollars had been removed from the bottom line to pay for the recall and inevitable fines. Described by some as…

Earlier this month the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a memorandum from the Deputy Attorney General announcing the Department’s intention to pursue aggressively any individuals involved in corporate crimes. According to the memorandum, the DOJ believes that seeking to hold individuals to account for perpetrating illegal misconduct is one of the most effective ways of…

With an estimated 30 million slaves around the world, the UK’s Modern Slavery Act passed earlier this year is a welcome piece of legislation. Heralded as the first of its kind in Europe and one of the first in the world, the new law significantly enhances the support and protection of victims, metes out severe…

As the Gambling Commission consults on new licensing standards that could include a social responsibility code as well as advertising restrictions, four of Britain’s biggest bookmakers have formed The Senet Group in a move to promote responsible gambling. At this stage, their initiatives focus on advertising: removing adverts for touch-screen roulette machines from their windows…

Despite concerted efforts to combat corruption by business and governments, bribery still poses a significant risk for international corporations, particularly those operating in some of the more challenging regions of the world. Demands for payments remain commonplace, leaving businesses to wonder if anything has really changed despite their considerable investment in anti-bribery programmes to comply…

Marrying the demands of the UK Bribery Act with the multiple suppliers involved in Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contracts is proving to be one of the bigger challenges for Bribery Act compliance. Clients and contractors joined us for our Business Ethics Debate at the House of Lords this month and engaged in a frank discussion…

The first EU Anti-Corruption Report, reveals that the playing field for businesses in Europe is far from level. Sixty-nine per cent of the businesses surveyed by the EU (nearly 8,000) felt that paying bribes and exploiting political connections were the easiest ways to obtain certain services. Three quarters of companies surveyed considered corruption to be…