Business Partner Legal Barometer: The Cross-Border Readiness Gap
Navigating the legal and compliance burden of international expansion
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What is The Cross-Border Readiness Gap?
The Cross-Border Readiness Gap is CSC research on the operational pressures that can slow complex cross-border matters when entity, ownership, compliance, KYC, data, and filing information is not coordinated early enough to prevent delay, rework, and duplicated effort.
The report is based on research commissioned in Q2 2026 among 200 senior professionals, including external legal advisers, corporate and strategic buyers, and internal legal, transaction management, or execution leaders within private capital firms. All respondents had recent experience of multiple cross-border deals, expansions, restructurings, or entity and compliance projects.
Core finding: the challenge is not simply legal complexity. Cross-border execution depends on accurate information, clear ownership, coordinated compliance activity, and the operational readiness to put legal and strategic decisions into effect across jurisdictions.
Top cross-border legal and compliance trends and takeaways for 2026
Seventy-four percent of respondents cite market entry or international expansion as a major legal and compliance execution burden, compared with 71% for ongoing entity governance and compliance and 28% for M&A transactions.
Half of respondents report that entity, compliance, or ownership information issues typically add one to two weeks to cross-border matters, while 16% report delays of three to four weeks. Separately, 105 respondents (53%) say they often have to redo work because entity or ownership information is missing, outdated, or inconsistent, and one respondent (1%) says this happens very often.
Sixty-three percent cite completing entity setup steps, including directors, agents, and filings, as a source of rework, unplanned legal effort, or delay. Opening bank accounts or completing KYC checks follows at 48%.
Sixty-six percent are assigning one clear owner for cross-border work, 60% are creating a standard ready-to-close information pack, and 53% are involving compliance earlier in deals.
Forty-three percent are investing in entity management technology. At the same time, 64% see AI protections in vendor contracts as essential and 61% require human review before relying on AI outputs.
Why cross-border readiness matters
International expansion, entity governance, restructuring, and other cross-border matters require more than legal advice. Execution can depend on entity formation, directors and officers, ownership records, filings, licenses, tax registrations, bank accounts, KYC, data privacy requirements, approvals, and ongoing governance across multiple jurisdictions.
The readiness gap appears when those operational dependencies are not coordinated early enough. The report shows how fragmented information, unclear ownership, duplicated work, and jurisdiction-specific compliance requirements can translate into avoidable delay and unplanned legal effort.
Key findings from the report
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74% cite market entry or international expansion as a major legal and compliance execution burden, versus 28% for M&A transactions.
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71% cite ongoing entity governance and compliance as a major execution burden.
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50% report that entity, compliance, or ownership information issues typically add one to two weeks to cross-border matters; another 16% report delays of three to four weeks.
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63% cite completing entity setup steps, including directors, agents, and filings, as a source of rework, unplanned legal effort, or delay.
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51% identify the same work being done more than once as the single biggest cause of coordination problems in cross-border work.
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90% say regulatory or compliance execution issues caused problems in the previous 24 months, including increased legal review or the need to remediate entity information before proceeding.
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66% are assigning one clear owner for cross-border work, while 60% are creating a standard ready-to-close information pack.
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33% identify managing privacy or cybersecurity risks as the biggest skills or capacity gap, followed by owning and maintaining entity data at 22% and managing legal processes and workflows at 21%.
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64% see AI protections in vendor contracts as essential and 61% require human review before relying on AI outputs.
Expert insights
People think that the U.S. is one jurisdiction but it’s really not. We’ve got all the rules, filing requirements, and regulations at the state level, in a similar fractured way to the European market and Asia-Pacific regions. You need to understand the nuances of what’s different between these and where you’re operating.
Marshall Saffer
Managing Director of Fund and Capital Market Services
Technology creates a single source of truth in which the corporate files and records can be accessed by stakeholders globally. The technology doesn’t replace either the legal advisory or the actual filing work but enables better execution by showcasing a proactive manner and offering a central source of truth to stakeholders.
Myrna Reijnders
Market Leader for the Americas
It’s becoming more popular to rely on consultants who are available to do project management on a cross-border basis. They’re invaluable to making sure that people are working in the right way and in the right sequence.
Stuart Fross
Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP
Questions answered in the report
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Why can market entry and international expansion create a greater execution burden than M&A?
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How do missing, outdated, or inconsistent entity and ownership data create delay and repeated work?
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Which entity setup, KYC, privacy, sanctions, and tax requirements create the most execution friction?
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How are firms improving ownership, preparation, and coordination across cross-border matters?
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What role can entity management technology, specialist partners, and AI controls play in improving readiness?
Frequently asked questions about cross-border legal and compliance readiness
A cross-border readiness gap arises when the entity, ownership, compliance, KYC, data, filing, and approval information needed to execute a matter is not coordinated early enough to prevent delay, rework, or duplicated effort. The report argues that this reflects the operational complexity of multijurisdictional work rather than a simple failure to prepare.
CSC commissioned research in 2026 among 200 senior professionals. Respondents included external legal advisers; corporate or strategic buyers with direct responsibility for cross-border deals or expansions; and internal legal, transaction management, or execution leaders within private capital firms. All had experience of multiple cross-border matters in the previous 24 months, with respondents based across North America, Europe including the U.K., Asia Pacific, and Latin America.
The report is for law firm partners and legal advisers, general counsel and in-house legal teams, corporate development and transaction leaders, compliance professionals, private capital legal and execution teams, and senior decision-makers responsible for international expansion, entity governance, or other complex cross-border matters.
The report features insights from CSC experts Marshall Saffer, Managing Director of Fund and Capital Market Services; Myrna Reijnders, Market Leader for the Americas; and Ian McConnel, Chief Legal Officer. It also includes perspectives from legal partners Stuart Fross, Partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, and Richard Stempler, Partner at Dentons.
Market entry can require entity formation, directors and officers, ownership records, filings, licenses, tax registrations, bank accounts, KYC, employment requirements, and ongoing governance. These requirements vary by jurisdiction and may need to be completed in a specific sequence before a business can operate effectively.
A ready-to-close information pack centralizes the information needed for cross-border activity, including structure charts, entity details, beneficial ownership information, and information relating to directors and authorized signatories. Sixty percent of respondents say organizations are creating a standard ready-to-close information pack in response to cross-border complexity.
The most common response in the survey is assigning one clear owner for cross-border work, cited by 66%. This is followed by creating a standard ready-to-close information pack at 60%, involving compliance earlier in deals at 53%, outsourcing more specialist work at 44%, and investing in entity management technology at 43%.
The findings suggest organizations want AI efficiency without weakening controls. Sixty-four percent see AI protections in vendor contracts as essential, while 61% require human review before relying on AI outputs.