Peruse the legal business headlines on any given day and you're sure to see a story about the investigation of a public company by the Securities & Exchange Commission. These investigations can be devastating to any company's reputation and its bottom line, as they can bring civil and criminal charges as well as huge fines for not cooperating.

Criminal and civil charges aside, one area that a targeted company can limit its exposure is in its decision of whether or not to cooperate with the government investigation.

According to some corporate law firms, any request for information from the SEC, even an "informal one," is adversarial right from the start. Attorney Jordan Eth comments, "While you may want cooperate, you don't necessarily have to. If you do cooperate, you may be waiving a privilege, implicating someone, or creating evidence that two years from now is going to get someone in trouble."

Once a company decides to cooperate, there's no half-stepping. There have been numerous reports of companies that agree to cooperate, only to get fined later because they don't cooperate enough.

The SEC settlement with Ahold, the Dutch operator of the Giant and Stop & Shop supermarkets in the U.S., illustrates the outcome of good cooperation. Quoting an AP article by Mary Gordon: "Global grocery retailer Ahold NV has agreed to a settlement of civil fraud charges over an alleged $1 billion overstatement of earnings in a deal with U.S. regulators that does not fine the company. . . The SEC said the company was not fined because of its "extensive cooperation" in the agency's investigation."

Attorney Larry Byrne managed the settlement for Ahold, which (in the words of a White & Case press release) "represents a marked departure from the SEC's recent pattern of steadily increasing fines the Commission has imposed on companies for violations of the securities laws."

The moral of this story: Cooperating with the SEC is not mandatory or easy, but it could save your company millions.