You have been hired as the Chief Compliance Officer for Livelong Corp., a global health food company that has just gone public through an initial public offering (“IPO”). The Company is headquartered in Upper Montclair, NJ, and has operations in 30 countries around the world.
The CEO created your position recently as a result of pressure from the newly formed Compliance Committee of the board to become “IPO ready” as well as to respond to a compliance violation that was reported by an employee in one of the company’s Asian country operations.
You report directly to the CEO. Today is your first day on the job. You do not have any staff reporting into you. You’re a one-person show.
Specifically, this position was created as the company was about to go “public” and because there was a potential violation of the company’s anti-bribery and anti-corruption policy – and a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. These allegations surfaced through the internal Ethics and Compliance HelpLine.
The CEO isn’t sure if the same violations have potentially occurred in other company countries. It’s possible. But this issue got the CEO worried about other potential areas of compliance that should be an area of focus for the company, too. He’s heard that anti-trust, product quality, and insider trading could be risks, too. He’s not sure.
As you were making your way to your office this morning, the CEO pulled you into his office and asked you to prepare a memorandum to the compliance committee of the board of directors. The committee is very concerned about the state of compliance within the organization. The committee members have high expectations of you, given your significant ethics and compliance knowledge and experience.
The CEO has asked you to be sure your presentation illustrates what the new ethics and compliance governance structure and program will look like from “soup to nuts.” The CEO doesn’t know a lot about best practices related to governance structures and compliance programs, and so he’s relying on you to lay all that you know about what a proper ethics and compliance program should look like.
The CEO has also let you know that the compliance committee members tend to get bored quickly, so the CEO has urged you to be creative when putting together your presentation. He’s suggested that you include sample charts, diagrams, and other sample materials that are illustrative of the key work steps you will undertake. Again, the CEO has urged you to be as comprehensive as possible and to incorporate as much relevant material from your Private Sector Compliance coursework.