I’ve definitely experienced cultural due diligence issues, particularly with human resource and legal matters, especially in cross-border acquisitions involving Latin American targets. The language and cultural barrier also presents difficulty in getting and interpreting information provided. I’ve found that having local advisors can go a long way to alleviating these issues -they can handle the language issue and explain to us cultural context for explain where things may be normal but low risk or to identify risks that we not be aware of due to cultural issues.
