The United States, many think, leads the way globally in its passage and enforcement of anti-bribery and corruption, and whistleblower protection laws. But U.S. companies doing business in the U.K. need to know that our overseas cousins are not far behind, and indeed may have leapfrogged over us, at least insofar as financial services companies are concerned, with the recent publication of the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)'s new whistleblower rules.1

So the title of this column may be more than just a bad pun. A brief review will show that our anti-bribery and whistleblower laws have been answered, step by step, by parallel U.K. laws that in some cases go beyond our own restrictions.

For example, the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) may have spawned the U.K. Bribery Act. However, the U.K. law in some ways goes further. The FCPA forbids only bribes to governments to extract an improper favor, but the Bribery Act's proscriptions are not so limited. Further, the FCPA contemplates that “facilitation payments” may in some cases be necessary and lawful, but the Bribery Act admits no such possibility.