While I take some minor exception to the implication that corporate P.I.s spend the majority of their time rifling through dustbins, the essential truth is the same - our industry is growing, our client base is expanding and our public profile, for good or ill, is inching ever higher. And dustbins... they CAN be useful:

Sleuths step out of the dustbins and into the limelight

By Liz Chong
The Times
March 04, 2006

Companies may not admit using them, but private investigators have gained acceptance. Their clients include governments, leading investment banks, hedge funds, private equity houses and FTSE 100 companies, but few would admit that they have ever hired corporate detectives, let alone met any. It would be too embarrassing to reveal that a company had enlisted the help of a private investigator to dig up the dirt on an opponent or client, or disclose that they had been duped by an employee or partner...

...business investigation and intelligence is on the rise, driven by an array of legislation introduced by the US Congress in an attempt to clean up corporate America. The laws impose heavy duties on directors, accountants and lawyers. Directors, perhaps not surprisingly now that they are personally liable for any financial scandals, want to avoid falling foul of prosecutors, who have zealously pursued white-collar crime in recent years, with the open backing of the Bush Administration.

...The plethora of bribery and corruption legislation has made it common practice for investors to hire investigators to look at the hedge funds they may invest in, or for private banks to hire companies that examine the background of a new client from Eastern Europe...

...Increasingly aggressive business tactics make it standard practice for private equity houses to use investigators to examine the curriculum vitae of the chief executive of a potential target. Similarly, investment banks advising well-known businessmen on mergers and acquisitions have been known to conduct due diligence on their past by hiring corporate sleuths. Lawyers are also a steady stream of revenue for the industry...

...The willingness to hire private investigators can be partly attributed to the success of the industry in shedding its threatening image. The credit for this lies with Jules Kroll, the enigmatic grandfather of the industry, who spent much of the 1980s absorbed in high-profile takeover investigations for Wall Street. Mr Kroll’s success was cemented in 1992 when he was featured in The New York Times as Wall Street’s “gumshoe”...

...The industry is characterised by a handful of larger companies, with some smaller boutiques. These include GPW, headed by Patrick Grayson, a former Irish Guards officer who previously ran Kroll’s London office. Another recent breakaway is the good governance group, known as G3. The marketplace has even attracted interest from the Big Four accounting companies, which have set up specialist units within their forensic sections. Yet they are all dependent on the web of contacts accumulated through networking.

...The companies all say that they have strict ethics policies, which require them to observe the laws of the country they are working in. But it is not uncommon for investigators to distance themselves from surveillance work or bugging by hiring smaller agencies.

Check out the full article here.

-- MDT

Labels: background checks, bribery, Kroll