Management Presentation

The comprehensive investigation and analysis of a business prior to an investment, acquisition, or partnership. Due diligence covers financials, legal, commercial, technical, and operational areas, and increasingly includes assessment of intangible assets and productivity metrics.

The economic value of a workforce's collective experience, skills, knowledge, creativity, and health. Investment in human capital through recruitment, training, development, and retention is a key intangible asset category and a primary driver of productivity growth.

Reverse due diligence is diligence a seller, or the management team of a target, carries out on the buyer. In any deal where the seller retains an ongoing interest — an earn-out, a rollover of equity into the enlarged group, or a management team joining a private-equity platform — the buyer's quality matters as much to the seller as the reverse.

A quality of earnings (QoE) review is an analysis of how sustainable and reliable a company's reported profits are, carried out during due diligence. Rather than re-auditing the accounts, it tests whether earnings reflect genuine, repeatable trading: it examines revenue recognition, customer concentration, the split between recurring and one-off income, the working-capital cycle, and every adjustment made to arrive at normalised EBITDA.

A change of control occurs when ownership of a company passes to a new party, as it does on an acquisition. The term matters in M&A because many of a business's contracts contain change-of-control clauses that are triggered by the sale: a customer or supplier contract, a lease, a licence or a loan may allow the other party to renegotiate or terminate if the company changes hands.

A teaser is the short, deliberately anonymous document a seller's adviser uses to test the market for a business without revealing its identity. Usually one or two pages, it summarises the sector, size, financial highlights and investment rationale in enough detail to interest a buyer but not enough to identify the company.

The body of legislation, regulations, and case law governing the relationship between employers and employees, covering areas such as contracts of employment, unfair dismissal, discrimination, working time, minimum wage, and collective bargaining. Employment law considerations are critical in M&A due diligence, particularly when valuing assembled workforce and assessing TUPE transfer obligations.

The strategic decision to perform a business function or process internally rather than contracting it to an external provider. Insourcing is the opposite of outsourcing and is typically motivated by the desire to retain control over quality, protect proprietary knowledge, build internal capabilities, or reduce long-term costs.

How to Buy a Business: Grow by Acquisition

The buy-side hub: finding, diligencing, financing and integrating an acquisition.

AI in Private Equity: Due Diligence for AI-Enabled Targets

Private equity firms are acquiring AI-enabled targets at record rates, but traditional due diligence frameworks miss critical AI-specific risks. This article provides a comprehensive AI due diligence methodology covering technical, commercial, regulatory, and talent dimensions.

What is acquisition due diligence?

Acquisition due diligence is the structured verification of what you are buying — financial, legal, commercial, tax, people and, crucially, the intangible assets that make up most of the value — before you commit.

How do you present intangible assets to investors?

Present intangible assets as evidence of sustainable competitive advantage, backed by financial metrics (LTV, pricing power, churn reduction) rather than anecdote.

When should you start fundraising and what are the warning signs you're not ready?

You should start fundraising when you have product-market fit signals (retention >40%, viral coefficient >0.5, or clear customer demand) and burn runway for 12-18 months.