Special report: legal risk
Top ten legal risks | Keep your company on side with the law | The regulators: who's who | NatWest Three: could you be next? | What's my liability as a company director? | Get ready to be raided | Defective documentation | Survive an FSA investigation | Employers watch out

Given the increasingly aggressive regulatory environment and the constant flux of company legislation, it is difficult for directors to keep abreast of the risks that affect most areas of their company’s operations.

Falling afoul of legal and regulatory regimes is increasingly leading to severe consequences for companies and sometimes even directors individually, through criminal charges and imprisonment, revocation of licences and serious damage to their reputation and brand.

In this environment, directors must adopt a proactive approach to handling these risks at all stages of the regulatory cycle. Here are the key areas of regulatory risk that businesses should ensure are being adequately dealt with:

1. Competition

2. Data protection

3. Copyright infringement

4. Product recall

5. Health and safety

6. Accounts

7. Tax

8. The Financial Services Authority

9. Money laundering

10. Extradition

Legal risks in full

John Blain is partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Ebrahim Ali, Karen Crozier, Vanessa Knapp, Stuart Goldberg, Mark Parsons, Charles Goode, Ben Roe, Matt Bruce, Andrew Austin, James Bourke and Jonathan Kembery also contributed to this article

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