Ethisphere Connects Companies to Focus on Integrity Across an Evolving Latin America Landscape

New York, NY , June 29, 2017 (Newswire.com) - ​​​The Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, introduced its 5th Annual Latin America Ethics Summit to an assembly of senior business and compliance leaders in Miami for the very first time, following four consecutive years in Brazil. Connecting Chief Legal Officers, Chief Compliance Officers, LATAM region compliance leaders, and outside industry experts, the Summit served as a platform for peer-to-peer benchmarking and interactive dialogue to address new standards and practices for fueling company integrity and performance.

“We know that at the very least there is a perception that companies operating across LATAM are more vulnerable to missteps, and companies are looking for more guidance not just from outside counsel, but from their peers as well,” said Ruti Smithline, a member of the Summit faculty and Partner at Morrison & Foerster where she was recognized in 2017 as one of Latin America's Top 100 Female Lawyers for FCPA work. “For the last five years, this Summit has provided one of the most practical channels to open up that dialogue across leaders with a concentration in this market, and that is essential to cultivate best practices.”

"It was a perfect scenario to analyze the environment of compliance in Latin America, showing the problems, working on solutions and making new contacts to work with."

Ignacio Stepancic, Chief Compliance Officer Grupo Bimbo, a 2017 Ethisphere World's Most Ethical Companies® honoree, a first for a Mexico-based company

Ethisphere’s Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) community with representatives from Royal Caribbean Cruises, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, Jones Lang LaSalle, TE Connectivity, Western Union, and SNC-Lavalin anchored a diverse faculty with deep experience in addressing business challenges in Latin America. BELA was founded with the notion that companies, regardless of industry, face many common, and often complex, issues in some of the most challenging regions in the world. By bridging the divide that companies often encounter, BELA has been at the front of connecting like-minded leaders on themes that matter most. Latin America is a premium example of this growing need to advance these discussions together. The faculty spoke candidly about perceptions and practicalities in the region on such issues as third party anti-corruption, measuring ethical culture, the risk environment, application of the new ISO 37001 anti-bribery management standard, effective multicultural training and more.

“In just five years the Latin America Ethics Summit has grown to be a vital program with a faculty and delegation that represents multidisciplinary and multicultural knowledge to foster thoughtful discourse, and we see that immediately when leaders from Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Panama, the U.S. and more start engaging with one another,” said Kevin McCormack, Vice President of Global Thought Leadership and Programs at Ethisphere. “Each year this Summit takes place you really see a compliance and business community who are spirited about change and passionate about inspiring companies to play an active role in company integrity across the region. We take a close look at the themes that elevate the dialogue and motivate others to action and see how we can best apply these in other key markets such as Europe and India later this year.”

Ethisphere has published a recap of the Summit focusing on several major themes, including data insights on company practices, and highlighting leadership involvement, serving as a supplement for those who were at the event and an impactful summary for other professionals who were unable to attend this year.

As part of the BELA mission in sharing best practices and insights across the broader business community, Ethisphere is proud to share the published recap of the Latin America Ethics Summit, accessible here: http://insights.ethisphere.com/wp-content/uploads/LAES-2017-Recap.pdf

“It would be fair to say that Ethisphere’s Latin America Ethics Summit was one of the best conferences I have recently attended,” said Rafael Pagliuso de Andrade, General Counsel for Latin America at Emerson. “All panels I attended were very educational and the mediation kept things going in a pretty dynamic manner.”

“It was a perfect scenario to analyze the environment of compliance in Latin America, showing the problems, working on solutions and making new contacts to work with,” said Ignacio Stepancic, Chief Compliance Officer Grupo Bimbo, a 2017 Ethisphere World’s Most Ethical Companies® honoree, a first for a Mexico-based company.

For more information on Ethisphere’s BELA community, visit http://bela.ethisphere.com.

About Ethisphere 
The Ethisphere® Institute is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Ethisphere has deep expertise in measuring and defining core ethics standards using data-driven insights that help companies enhance corporate character. Ethisphere honors superior achievement through its World’s Most Ethical Companies® recognition program, provides a community of industry experts with the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA) and showcases trends and best practices in ethics with Ethisphere Magazine. Ethisphere is also the leading provider of independent verification of corporate ethics and compliance programs that include: Ethics Inside® Certification and Compliance Leader Verification™. More information about Ethisphere can be found at http://www.ethisphere.com.

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Source: The Ethisphere Institute