  The de-excitation of compound nuclei has been successfully described for
several decades by means of statistical models. However, accurate predictions
require some fine-tuning of the model parameters. This task can be simplified
by studying several entrance channels, which populate different regions of the
parameter space of the compound nucleus.
  Fusion reactions play an important role in this strategy because they
minimise the uncertainty on the entrance channel by fixing mass, charge and
excitation energy of the compound nucleus. If incomplete fusion is negligible,
the only uncertainty on the compound nucleus comes from the spin distribution.
However, some de-excitation channels, such as fission, are quite sensitive to
spin. Other entrance channels can then be used to discriminate between
equivalent parameter sets.
  The focus of this work is on fission and intermediate-mass-fragment emission
cross sections of compound nuclei with 70<=A<=240. The statistical
de-excitation model is GEMINI++. The choice of the observables is natural in
the framework of GEMINI++, which describes fragment emission using a
fission-like formalism. Equivalent parameter sets for fusion reactions can be
resolved using the spallation entrance channel. This promising strategy can
lead to the identification of a minimal set of physical ingredients necessary
for a unified quantitative description of nuclear de-excitation.
