What a regulator hears when you say you are cooperating fully

Regulators read press statements. Some of them keep a file of the adverbs.

A former official of a regulator once told me that her team kept a file, informally, of the adverbs that regulated companies used about their own conduct in public statements during investigations. “Fully” was the most common. “Proactively” was second. Her team’s practice was to check each one against what the company had actually done, and to mention the results, politely, at the next meeting.

I have thought about that file ever since.

Regulators read what companies say in public about their investigations, and they read it alongside what the companies say to them in private. A statement that a company is “cooperating fully” will be compared with the company’s response times, its document productions and the number of times its lawyers have asked for an extension. If the two do not match, the statement does not merely fail to help. It becomes evidence of something.

Revision

We are cooperating ~~fully and proactively~~ with the regulator’s investigation and have provided the documents it has asked for.

A statement during an investigation, draft 1 and draft 2. Deletions struck through; insertions underlined.

Our advice is to describe cooperation by what has been done, not by how it felt to do it. “We have provided the documents the regulator asked for” can be checked and will be found true. “We are cooperating fully” can also be checked, and will be found to depend on what “fully” means, which is a conversation nobody wants to have in a regulator’s meeting room.