Investment banks are often called upon to make underwriting decisions with very short time horizons, as bought and overnight deals become increasingly the norm. These transactions pose financial and reputational risk for banks as they try to assess the accounting, financial statement, business, legal and other risks associated with a public company in a shortened timeframe.

Founded in 2003, Glass, Lewis & Co. helps investment banks assess the risk associated with underwriting a deal and can help monitor clients on an ongoing basis for early signs of trouble.

With our online tools -- including the Monitor, Risk Monitor and Proxy Paper -- a capital markets professional, or banker, can get a complete risk profile of a company quickly, including financial statement, disclosure, corporate governance, legal and business risk. And additional assistance is a phone call away. Our team of analysts, most of whom have advanced degrees in accounting or law, can provide detailed assessments of risk, accurately and quickly.

Using these same tools, bankers and capital markets professionals can keep abreast of developments at client companies, ensuring they are aware of deteriorating earnings quality and other signs of worsening business performance.

The specific services used by our investment banking clients include:

The Monitor is a web-based tool that enables investors to monitor continuously public companies for signs of unusual risk. The Monitor alerts users when financial information or other company disclosures signal possible weakening of company performance or when other developments, such as litigation, selling by insiders, related-party transactions or compensation arrangements, could harm stakeholders or foretell larger problems to come. Risk Monitor is a web based application that provides a near real-time ranking of a company's relative risk. Risk Monitor uses quantitative tools to analyze millions of data points to identify patterns that have been historical indicators of risk. It then ranks public companies based on their relative risk profile. The risk profiles, generated in near real-time, summarized as percentile-based scores, are calculated by tracking more than thirty data patterns that Glass Lewis has identified as predictive of risk to shareholder value. Glass Lewis is the leading, independent provider of global corporate governance and proxy research. Proxy Paper features contextual, objective analysis of corporate governance issues and voting recommendations on all proposals contained in thousands of global proxies.