improving mergers & acquisitions

We are highly specialised senior lawyers providing bespoke legal due diligence for mergers & acquisitions, both domestic and international, for Family / Principal Investment Offices, venture capital and private equity institutions, and general corporate acquirors.

In a word we optimise value from due diligence and reduce cost.

To mix metaphors you wouldn't buy a pig in a poke you'd come over and kick the tyres (well it would be inadvisable to kick the pig).

Centuries before M&A there was MA - military activity.

Both of them have several things in common (M&A being commercial warfare without the concomitant bloodshed except perhaps in metaphorical terms) not least the importance of which is knowing your ground before setting out. The military as is well known call this reconnaissance, lawyers call it due diligence.

Military commanders and CEO's who ignored this simple rule have soon come to grief.

And while a group of dedicated lawyers in front of computer screens do not have quite the same elan as a troop of Hussars the maxim is still the same warfare and business is risk better therefore to minimise or where possible eliminate the risk from the outset.

By using the services of senior commercial lawyers to identify, if you like, the dirty linen hiding in the cupboard, or the closet, wherever you may happen to be reading this.

100 pages of warranties are all very well but pursuing claims costs money and time and money spent up front is not just a good investment for negotiating the deal but provides a commercial log book for the acquirer's staff who will run the company after acquisition. After all you wouldn't buy a car without one (even after you've kicked the tyres) so why buy a company or business ditto.