corporate culture

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Internal controls must be tailored, proportionate, and risk-based — not just a “paper exercise”.

By Erin Brown Jones, Clare Nida, and Matthew Unsworth

Last week, the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) published its updated “Guidance on Evaluating a Corporate Compliance Programme” (the Guidance). The agency’s previous guidance was published in 2020 as an eight-page segment in the SFO Operational Handbook. The latest iteration is very much public-facing, with a helpful FAQ section and updates to reflect the “failure…

Low angle view looking down Lime Street to Lloyds of London Building, The Scalpel Building, Willis Building and The Leadenhall Building in the City of London UK

Guidance clarifies the implementation date, scope, and application of landmark new corporate offence, and provides suggestions for fraud-prevention procedures.

By Pamela Reddy, Clare Nida, Annie Birch, and Matthew Unsworth

On 6 November 2024, the UK Home Office published long-awaited statutory guidance on the new corporate offence of “failure to prevent fraud” (the Guidance).1 The failure to prevent fraud offence will come into force on 1 September 2025, after having been introduced last year by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA). It follows similar corporate “failure to prevent” offences in relation to bribery (under the Bribery Act 2010 (BA)) and the facilitation of tax evasion (under the Criminal Finances Act 2017 (CFA)). The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been calling for the introduction of a similar offence, specifically in relation to failure to prevent economic crime, for a number of years.

The offence is expected to make it easier for prosecutors to hold organisations accountable for fraud committed for their benefit and, as with the BA, is expected to drive a “major shift in corporate culture”. Along with the changes to the identification principle for corporate criminal liability introduced by ECCTA, it is anticipated that the number of successful corporate prosecutions will increase. The Guidance helpfully clarifies the scope and application of the new offence, as well as giving advice on what will constitute reasonable fraud-prevention procedures — and we set out our key takeaways below.

The Financial Services Skills Commission has issued an insight paper outlining how companies can collect and evaluate data on employees’ socioeconomic backgrounds.

By David Berman, Nicola Higgs, Rob Moulton, and Dianne Bell

Socioeconomic backgrounds of employees and socioeconomic diversity at senior levels across the UK financial services industry is beginning to feature more prominently in diversity and inclusion (D&I) discussions. Several government and industry taskforces and studies conducted on the issue of social mobility and class advantages/disadvantages have revealed striking impacts of this bias within the UK financial services sector. Not only is the sector significantly reliant on individuals from higher socioeconomic backgrounds at the leadership level, but the studies also indicate that employees from working class or lower socioeconomic backgrounds are held back in a number of ways (which may lead to their eventual departure from the sector).

  • Progression gap: Employees from working class or lower socioeconomic backgrounds progress 25% slower than peers despite no difference in job performance, and they find conforming to the dominant cultures “exhausting” and this impacts on their individual performances.
  • Pay gap: A class pay gap of £17,500 appears to exist in financial services (compared with £5,000 in the technology sector).
  • Opportunities to upskill talent: Findings suggest that individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to sign up for training opportunities.

From a regulatory perspective, this lack of diversity at the senior level impacts the culture of a firm, raising concerns around, for example, groupthink and its impacts on effective decision-making.

UK companies should be aware of the increasing focus on corporate culture by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.

By Nathan H. Seltzer, David Berman, Stuart Alford QC, Christopher M. Ting, and Nell Perks

In a recent speech that has garnered significant attention, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco highlighted several important changes in how the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will pursue corporate crime during the Biden Administration. (Read Latham’s in-depth Client Alert analysing the speech and its potential impact, and Latham’s blog post highlighting matters of particular relevance to UK PLCs.)

This post highlights the DOJ’s particular emphasis on the importance of “corporate culture”.

The priorities will impact non-US companies who may face a US DOJ with a renewed emphasis on combating corporate crime.

By Stuart Alford QC, Nathan H. Seltzer, and Christopher M. Ting

In a recent speech that has garnered significant attention, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Lisa Monaco, highlighted several important changes regarding how the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will pursue corporate crime during the Biden Administration. Latham’s in-depth analysis of the speech and its potential impact can be found here.

In addition to reinforcing prior statements that the Biden Administration will prioritise the prosecution of corporate and white collar crime, the speech touched on several areas that may be of particular relevance to UK and other non-US companies. This blog post highlights some of those areas.