November 27, 2006
Follow-up to Wall Street Journal Article on November 27, 2006 GLG Summarizes its Systems to Manage Expert Consulting
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Gerson Lehrman Group agrees with the Wall Street Journal's assertion that most experts -- and especially those who are employed by companies -- have obligations and potential conflicts that require safeguards and necessarily limit the experts' ability to engage in consulting projects.
That is why we have invested heavily in developing systems that help our clients and Council Members disclose and avoid conflicts. These systems include:
Contract Management System: This system requires Council Members to sign and annually re-sign a contract specifying that they have reviewed all other relevant contracts and policies and attesting to the fact that they are able to participate in outside consulting projects. GLG requires Council Members to acknowledge this contract before every consulting engagement.
Disclosure Management System: GLG solicits, stores and organizes information from Council Members about any restrictions that apply to their consulting. These disclosed restrictions are mapped to a proprietary database of hundreds of thousands of products, services and topics. This system (patent pending) allows GLG to track disclosed conflicts to help prevent current and future invitations on the potentially restricted subjects.
Oversight Systems: GLG provides clients with an online project monitoring system. This web-based software enables clients to both manage the research activity of their firms and implement their own compliance procedures.
Moreover, while only a small fraction of the consulting projects we arrange involve Council Members who are employed by companies, GLG has developed an additional layer of safeguards for those projects. For example, as explained in todays article, we do not permit industry experts who are employed to consult about their own companies.
We also have developed:
Member Programs: GLG permits Council Members who are employed to engage in extensive or on-going consulting projects only when they obtain the written consent of their employers. Thousands of Council Members are in Member Programs.
Institutional Registry: GLG maintains a database of company preferences with respect to the participation of their employees, consultants and business partners in outside consulting projects. This database is the only one of its kind -- over the years, we have tracked and implemented every policy we know, and subsequently reached out to several thousand HR and IR professionals, asking them to register their companies policies. (Please see www.glgroup.com/registry.asp)
At GLG, we do not want to arrange a consulting project in violation of a companys guidelines. While other expert research platforms may express the same concerns, only GLG has invested in the technology necessary to solicit, track, and implement company policies.
We are investigating the incidents alleged in the article. To the extent that any of them represent violations of our client Usage Policies and Council Member Terms and Conditions, they will be dealt with seriously and swiftly.
Expert networks are critical to effective decision-making in business today. GLG remains committed to developing the most rigorous compliance framework and systems available for expert consulting.
Gerson Lehrman Group Contact:
Christopher M. Stella
212-880-6517
Gerson Lehrman Group and the Gerson Lehrman Group logo are registered trademarks of Gerson Lehrman Group, in the United States and other countries. Failure to list any other Gerson Lehrman Group trademarks does not constitute a waiver of any rights to any Gerson Lehrman Group trademarks, including unregistered trademarks. Other names included in this press release may also be the registered or unregistered trademarks of their respective owners.