Commercial Due Diligence

GRAPH’s team has years of experience advising leading private equity firms and corporations, and has developed a deep appreciation for the value that a truly great commercial due diligence (CDD) exercise can deliver. Equally, we understand what it takes to get the job done within today’s increasingly tight deal timeframes.

While CDD exercises should certainly answer the question “Is this asset worth investing in?”, we believe that the most helpful exercises go far beyond just being a “tick the box” audit. Rich investigation can yield the deep insights that:

  • Help our clients become better owners/operators; and
  • Create learnings that accrue to future opportunities

We develop detailed best practices and intellectual capital (see Diligence Matters, our best practice toolkit designed to help active acquirers with their commercial diligence activities) to ensure consistently great outcomes).

Every GRAPH commercial due diligence assignment includes these five core attributes:

  • I. Purpose

    Too many projects fall short because people fail to thoughtfully determine the key requirements for the work, and align all stakeholders against that mandate.

    There is no generic definition for the proper diligence assignment. Instead, the scope and size for a given project needs to be specified by the:

    • Character of the investor - and its larger investment model and strategic objectives
    • Specific investment thesis - and the strength of the investment thesis
    • Prior work completed - and remaining open issues
    • Purpose of the work - and the stakeholder expectations
    • Audience and circumstance in play

    Projects can then be rightsized and scoped to either resolve a limited set of critical questions with a GRAPH Issue Diligence or address a wide scope of potential diligence topics through Full Scope Commercial Diligence - regardless of whether it is an early-, mid- or a late-stage confirmatory requirement.

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