Tom,

Here are two quotes that give insight into the report's coverage:

"During Closings, also known as "liquidations", the operations of a division
of an organization are shut down, assets are often sold, and personnel
reduced in force or transferred. Records retention may not actually change,
as the parent body may still retain recordkeeping responsibilities for the
original operations for some time. Documentation of assets that were used in
tax preparations for the parent organization, will probably still need to be
retained for use in case of future tax audits. Other documentation required
by regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, may need
to be retained for many years, despite the cessation of operations at a
particular business site. However, it is unwise and potentially risky to try
to maintain unneeded records if they are no longer of use to the remaining
organization.

AND..

"All attempts to create separate work teams of due diligence business
analysts, legal counsel, internal business experts, and IT systems support
personnel invariably create "islands of information" and mismanaged records
over time. Although there are often clear reasons for direct transmission of
business records to lawyers, accountants, and consultants initially, the
moment that these separate groups start trying to share information, a
proliferation of duplicate redundant and poorly organized documents begins."

There will be differing responsibilities for managing records, depending on
the perspective - acquiring organization, closing organization, or an
organization divesting itself of some divisions. Every case is slightly
different and there are no clear expectations of conduct. If your
organization is involved in any of this, it would be risky to assume ANY
records management responsibilities disappear without finding some precise
legal or regulatory guidance indicating that is the case.

My most amazing discovery during doing this project was reading books and
web sites on mergers, acquisitions, and closings that often talked about the
importance of protecting intellectual property, accounting information, due
diligence information, etc, while seldom ever mentioning organized programs
(RIM) to do that!

Hope this helps. It is definitely an uncharted sea.

John

********************************

John T. Phillips

BS, MSLS, CRM, CDIA, FAI

Information Technology Decisions

www.infotechdecisions.com

865-966-9413

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