What It Takes to Be an Advantaged Acquirer

Last year was one for the M&A record books, and while M&A may not continue at this record pace, the trend seems far from abating. Many companies intend to continue coupling in 2016 for numerous strategic reasons, including expanding in existing markets and scaling for efficiencies. This type of heated pace can produce mistakes, such as deals that don’t achieve the anticipated benefits or fit strategically with the acquirer. Moreover, premiums acquirers agree to pay over the target’s pre-bid share price tend to escalate as competition intensifies. Learn common mistakes that can happen in merger waves and ways companies can potentially avoid them by becoming advantaged acquirers.

Ways to Engage Employees Amid a Corporate Crisis

Engaging employees before and during a crisis could significantly impact an organization’s ability to respond to an incident, as well as to recover from it. Nonetheless, nearly one-third (29.8%) of respondents in a recent poll of some 3,900 professionals believe that employees may be the most overlooked stakeholder when their organization is dealing with a crisis. Learn six ways to engage employees more deeply during a crisis.

Managing Third-party Risks to Create and Protect Value

Third-party relationships have the power to affect shareholder value negatively or positively, often exponentially in relation to the vendor’s size and type of service provided. While the focus often is on protecting the organization from downside losses, companies that proactively manage third-party risks across the extended enterprise stand to reap substantial upside benefits in terms of increased productivity, contract and asset optimization, and other opportunities.

Behavioral Strategy to Combat Choice Overload: Weekend Reading

A foundational concept in the behavioral field is choice architecture, explaining how the way choices are organized influences behavior. However, a better architecture may be necessary to assist managers in leveraging insights from the field, according to a report from Deloitte University Press. In this report excerpt, authors Timothy Murphy and Mark Cotteleer offer a straightforward, managerial-focused behavioral science framework that puts the business objective where it belongs: first.

PBS CFO Barbara Landes: Using Risk Assessments to Guide the Budgeting and Planning Process

With a strategic planning background and corporate finance acumen, Barbara Landes, CFO of the Public Broadcasting Service, is used to keeping a critical eye on both long- and short-term horizons. That’s one reason she uses a risk assessment process to begin her budgeting and planning efforts, which she says helps guide corporate strategy as well as asset allocation. In addition, Ms. Landes discusses how she measures growth at the not-for-profit media enterprise and develops talent, among other issues with Allan Cook, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Proactive Engagement Helps Build Shareholder Loyalty

Many companies are becoming increasingly proactive in engaging with their shareholders, with some implementing a governance function, often through the corporate secretary or general counsel, to lead engagement on governance matters. Further, boards are increasingly taking a heightened role in directly engaging shareholders, especially on topics such as executive compensation and board composition, according to the “2016 Directors’ Alert” from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. Learn more about what role boards can play and questions directors can pose to management about shareholder engagement.

Three Steps To Improve Improper Payments Prevention Strategies

Despite continuing efforts by federal agencies, improper payments remain a government-wide issue. Federal agencies can help strengthen their strategies to prevent improper payments by taking three steps: establish a holistic improper payments risk management framework; employ continuous monitoring using data analytics; and deploy root cause analysis techniques to identify and implement corrective action plans. Learn critical elements in implementing these actions, along with the Government Accountability Office Fraud Risk Management Framework, which incorporates leading practices to identify and mitigate fraud risks.

Adrift in Cyber Risks? Focus on the Probable

Amid a seemingly endless stream of cyberthreats, addressing those most likely to affect organizations can make cyber risk management less daunting and more efficient. However, addressing the breadth and depth of such risks calls for a pragmatic and risk-based approach. In a video interview, Mary Galligan, a director with Deloitte & Touche LLP, offers fundamental concepts of such an approach and highlights some of the latest trends in cyber risk management.

Global eDiscovery Management and Analysis: Five Questions

Managing large data volumes in response to litigation or regulatory inquiry may become far more difficult when the discovery involves data sources across international borders, raising important questions about how to organize and conduct eDiscovery activities. Jessica Anderson, Deloitte Advisory director, Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics LLP, discusses how committing to global data quality and consistency, making needed investments and looking for opportunities to innovate can help organizations meet continually growing discovery demands.

Cognitive Technologies—From Science Fiction to Real-world Value: Weekend Reading

Organizations are in the midst of a real-world paradigm shift: the final stages of a decades-long transition from the scientific discipline known as artificial intelligence into an array of applied cognitive technologies. Learn how cognitive technologies are changing the technology sector and how companies may be able to implement these technologies in their strategy and operations.