Code of Conduct Framework

The Board in charge of every firm has the responsibility to come up with, and record in writing a code stating the processes and practices that the company should follow for fair UPSI disclosure, as per the principles given in the Regulations; Schedule A. Schedule A gives specific minimum standards such as equality in accessing information, policy publication e.g. those about dividend, pursuits of inorganic growth, meetings and calls with analysts, recording the meetings and calls in writing among others. Furthermore, the Boards in charge of all listed market intermediaries and corporations are required to come up with a code that regulates, supervises and makes reports of trading activities by the staff and any other connected party (Nishith Desai Associates, 2016).

Reporting Violations

Any employee of a Company is allowed to present a complaint, which should be made with no ulterior motive or out of reasonable belief about any issues in the Code, to the Company management without being afraid of retaliation or reprisal. To the highest possible extent, the complainant's identity should not be disclosed. Some of the issues to be reported are auditing or accounting issues. The Company works to comply with every law applicable, including regulations and laws on securities, accounting controls and standards as well as audit practices (Jefferies Group LLC, 2017). With the aim of facilitating the presentation of complaints by employees, the procedures below have been created;

i. the retention, receipt and handling of complaints about accounting, internal controls on accounting or auditing issues, also known as "Accounting Matters", and any other issue within the Code;

ii. the undisclosed, anonymous presentation by employees regarding concerns about suspicious auditing or accounting issues or any other issue stated in the Code.

The Company shall not demote, dismiss, threaten, suspend, discriminate against or harass an employee within the terms of employment as a result of a lawful action by the employee with regard to reporting a complaint in good faith about auditing issues or any issue in the Code or as stated in the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Section 806). If a person is discovered to have...
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On the other hand, if an employee intentionally or carelessly makes a false accusation, they may face disciplinary action, which could also go as far as dismissal (Jefferies Group LLC, 2017).

Compliance with laws and regulatory orders

Mergers and acquisitions create economies of scale as well as synergies, reducing costs while increasing operations. Investors can be at rest knowing that after a merger, the market power will grow. Nonetheless, M&A needs to be reinforced with compliance to the regulations of the country in which it occurs (Sanjeev Kumar & Sambit Kumar, 2013). In spite of the fact that it is commonly known that short-term national, foreign and state returns on income tax will in most cases be needed for the targeted company from the time the tax year of the target begins to the day the acquisition occurs, it may be difficult to manoeuvre through completing the tax returns (Sayuk, Fricke, Naughtin, & Dugger, 2012).

Determine the Preparer

Many tax service personnel may be completely involved in the preparation of returns. In order to achieve simplicity, the short-term return preparations are mostly done by the service provider that prepared the target's returns for the previous year, regardless of whether a different service provider ultimately covers the surviving firm's tax function.

Maintain prior preparer relationship

No matter which tax service provider eventually completes the short-term returns of the target, relationships should be kept through the whole process of transition. Most of the information is required to be acquired in the process of due-diligence. However, the surviving firm can still be in a way reliant on the tax preparer of the target firm to acquire the return preparation information, obtaining access to previous year supporting information, understanding previous and present annum tax positions as well as better understanding of the target as a whole.

Understand due-diligence results

Before short-term returns are…