For a business enterprise, a crisis is any event that threatens its reputation, operations or assets. What all crisis events have in common is that they represent a crucial turning point for leadership and decision-making in an organization.

 

We have advised our clients on, and helped them manage through, a wide variety of crisis events—including:

• Sudden changes in corporate governance
• Contests for corporate control
• CEO succession
• Management turmoil
• Financial malfeasance
• Corporate litigation and class action litigation
• Criminal investigations, indictments, and convictions of key executives
• Regulatory investigation and sanctions by SEC, FDA, US Attorney, state attorneys general, banking and insurance regulators
• Stock market activity and shareholder activism
• Hostile takeover defense, mergers, acquisitions, recapitalizations
• Accounting irregularities, changes in accounting treatment, financial restatements
• Product safety issues, product failures, and recalls
• Bankruptcy, financial restructurings
• Labor unrest
• Attack by consumer activists, gadflies, determined adversaries, and attention-seekers
• Workplace issues including allegations of racial discrimination and sexual harassment
• Natural disasters
• Special events vulnerabilities
• Terrorist attacks
• Foreign Corrupt Practices Act concerns
• Business ethics, corporate responsibility, corporate human rights, and compliance
• Intellectual property disputes
• Workplace violence and fatalities
• Advertising and marketing mis-steps and mishaps, and   endorsement by controversial celebrities
• Violation of securities laws, Regulation FD
• Technology failures
• Embedded journalists and combat visibility
  

*Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000, by Houghton Miflin Company.