Regulation leads public retailer risks

Chicago – Almost all of the top 100 public retailers (97%) consider federal, state and local regulations as a risk factor, according to a new analysis of 10K filings from the largest 100 U.S. public retailers by BDO, LLP. Only general economic conditions (100%) was cited by more retailers, and this marks the highest percentage of public retailers citing regulations as a risk in the seven years BDO has been performing this analysis.



Other top concerns listed in the “BDO RiskFactor Report for Retail Businesses” include U.S. and foreign vendor/supplier concerns (95%), competition and consolidation in the retail sector (94%), implementation and maintenance of IT systems (89%) and labor (86%).



Doug Hart, partner in the Retail and Consumer Products practice at BDO USA, LLP, said that data protection has become critical considering how much sensitive information retailers collect through numerous touchpoints. “The increasing reliance on cloud computing solutions to process and store this data adds another dimension to this security and privacy risk,” said Hart.