KNOW YOUR BUSINESS PARTNERS
Who you decide to partner with in Latin America is often the most important decision impacting your firm’s market reputation in the region.
Why Conducting Reputational Due Diligence in Latin America Requires an In-Depth Approach
Conducting a thorough background check on a person or company in Latin America is more labor intensive and imprecise than it ought to be. Many records (police files, court documents, regulatory audits, tax information) remain undigitized, stored on paper, locked in government offices requiring a labor-intensive search to find them.
In nations where the rule of law is particularly weak, incriminating records can be expunged at a price, leaving some bad actors without a paper trail. Similarly, companies at loggerheads with government officials might find their reputations smeared by vengeful audits, and falsified reports.
Most companies in the region are privately held and thus not subject to the degree of scrutiny and standards that a publicly traded firm must face. In most privately held firms, the reputation of a company is inextricably linked to its principles, such that both corporate and personal due diligence must be carried out.
Part science, part art
AMI works with a network of due diligence experts across every market in the region who can quickly access paper files in different governemnt offices that form the foundation of any reputational due diligence. Each jurisdiction has its own rules of conduct on pulling documents and only local investigators know the ins and outs of a compliant search for documentation.
Layered on top of desk research is the all-important discreet interviews that are conducted with peers, competitors, customers, and suppliers who can shed light upon the business practices, and ethics synonymous with the person or company under investigation. Using local consultants to conduct such discreet interviews helps bring context and trust to the investigative process.
Our goal is to help you understand with whom you are about to hitch your reputation to in a given market and provide you with enough information such that you can decide to pursue the partnership or not.
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Tell us about your reputational due diligence needs for Latin America.
