Your overseas subsidiary receives a request for contracts and payment records. Finance is ready to send a folder. Local management wants to add a short explanation.

Before either happens, someone needs to own the response.

My cross-border e-commerce experience makes me look beyond the signed agreement. Who approved the discount? Who collected the payment? Who carried the cost of a return? Those answers may sit in separate systems.

For a cross-border lawyer, a useful starting point is a request-to-record map:

• What is being requested, for which entity and period?
• Where are the original records, and who controls them?
• Which document supports each factual statement?
• Who will check the translation and authorize the final submission?

Preservation and submission need separate decisions. Identify relevant records and prevent their routine deletion through an appropriate preservation process. Then review what must be supplied, in what form, through which lawful route.

A headquarters document should not simply be forwarded abroad because a local team needs it urgently. Counsel in both jurisdictions should assess the route before transfer. Equally, a transfer issue is not a reason to ignore a response deadline.

Local counsel should confirm the applicable procedure. If clarification or an extension is needed, request it promptly; do not assume it has been granted.

One management rule I would put in writing: discrepancies go onto an issues list. They do not disappear through editing.

An accurate response may need to explain why records differ. It should never conceal the difference by rewriting the past.

Start with one completed transaction and see whether your team can reconstruct it from original records. If a request has already arrived, send a non-confidential outline of the entity, deadline and requested categories through wzklaw.com.

#CrossBorderLaw #ChinaBusiness #CorporateGovernance #RegulatoryResponse

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Mike Wu, China-licensed Attorney · Cross-border practice
4 languages (CN/EN/ES/JA)
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