Crisis Management | How to deal with your worst corporate nightmare

Think of your worst corporate nightmare (and this isn’t Halloween!). The potential crisis that keeps you awake at night and could cause your company massive reputational damage, financial loss, regulatory fines, criminal liability and even personal liability for the senior management team. Whether it is a large data breach, regulatory investigation, dawn raid, corruption scandal, product defect or a major health and safety incident, how confident are you that your crisis management plan will hold up under the pressure?

This is increasingly a key topic for corporates and we have developed various tools and services to help our clients prepare for the worst. This month, we welcome a team to the Bay Area from the UK, Singapore and India, who will be conducting a number of crisis simulation workshops for clients. The workshops can be designed for a small number of participants, the Board and senior management team, or a larger group. Each workshop is bespoke to the business and can function as a test of existing protocols or a tool for raising awareness of these most pressing issues. If you are interested, please reach out to Sam Evans as soon as possible to book a slot or talk to the team about future workshops and support.

We have a busy Fall schedule so whatever area you’re interested in, we probably have a colleague who can provide some insights on the latest trends and issues and answer any burning questions!

First up, with deal volumes for games and interactive entertainment companies across Europe having been particularly high recently,
Tom Harding (UK Partner and head of OC’s Interactive Entertainment practice) and Mathias Loertscher (UK Partner in OC’s Corporate group) are here this week (October 8th) to talk about why the European market is so hot right now, as well as developments in consumer regulation, M&A and funding trends across Europe.

Next week (from October 15th) the theme is cyber security and data breaches when Ashley Hurst (UK Partner, OC’s International Head of Digital Business), Charlie Wedin (UK Partner in OC’s Tech Disputes team), Prashant Mara (Head of our affiliated offices in India, Corporate and Technology Partner),Chia-Ling Koh (Head of our Singapore office, and adviser on digital innovation, investments and critical infrastructural transformation projects) will be in town. The team are here to speak at the SVAGC conference on “Cyber, Crisis and Reputation” and we look forward to seeing many of you at the SVAGC event. As well as running crisis management workshops, Prashant and Chia-Ling have a wealth of experience in supporting US companies as they expand into India and Singapore respectively and would be happy to talk about any aspects of doing business in those countries. Please let Sam or I know if you’d like to meet them.

This month, we also welcome back
Kevin van’t Klooster,a data privacy and commercial lawyer from our Amsterdam digital business team. We are really excited that Kevin is back in the Silicon Valley office especially with his extensive experience of advising some leading US tech companies on high profile data privacy issues.

Finally, even as the UK / EU negotiations appear to be reaching their end-game, Brexit continues to evolve and change. I thought it good to sit down with our own
Ashley Morgan to talk about the practical side of Brexit and how your company should be preparing in this short video.

We look forward to seeing you at the various Fall events and activities.

Kind regards,

Emily Jones –  Partner, Osborne Clarke