A couple of months ago, I wrote about the signs of protectionism emerging within many countries (including the U.S.), as noted in a World Bank study, “Trade Protection: Incipient but Worrisome Trends.”

While politicians may try to win votes by stoking voters’ fears of the world outside their home countries, many business executives, in contrast, are looking to foreign markets for growth. That’s one conclusion of a recent survey of 500 senior execs in the U.S. by HSBC Bank USA, the “U.S. Survey on International Business”. In fact, the proportion of executives boosting their overseas sales targets jumped from 49 to 56 percent between 2008 and 2009. Three emerging markets – Brazil, China, and India – look most promising, the survey found. more

In my last post, Gordon Burnes identified a formal enterprise risk management (ERM) program as one of the best ways for organizations to be prepared for the potentially massive U.S. regulatory overhaul to be unveiled by President Obama very soon.

That seems like a compelling reason; however, if you (or your colleagues) remain unconvinced of ERM’s value, BDO consulting partner Glenn Pomerantz and managing director Sydney Rose Leo, who have been presenting on ERM lately, identify several other motivations for implementing a formal ERM program.

They say that ERM enables a company to:

• Prevent highly likely and high-impact risks from happening at the company or reduce the impact of risk;

• Support the board of directors’ responsibilities;

• Bring the management team to consensus on key risks;

• Lower the costs of audits;

• Lower the costs of insurance;

• Improve bond ratings;

• Become good at managing risk so that the company can grow faster; and

• Gain a competitive advantage. ###