M & A Support
Whether you are buying a business, advising the purchasers or vendors of a business, or selling a business, due diligence is a major part of the process.
It is taken for granted that legal and financial professional advisors play a major part in the process on both sides of the deal in enhancing the quality and depth of information discovered during due diligence, however the examination of a company's IS systems under due diligence is normally very cursory and trivial. It is commonly performed by the legal advisors to the purchaser, and is usually limited to examination of Data Protection Compliance, Software Licensing Compliance, Backup Strategy, and the discovery of Maintenance & Support Contracts.
In short, it is normal, even in deals for aquisitions exceeding £100,000,000, that the examination of the operating infrastructure of a business is cursory. Given that statistics show that a huge majority of businesses fail to recover following major systems damage and data loss this seems inadequate. The IS Systems and Operations of a target should be examined in close detail prior to acquisition, both for integrity to reassure the acquirers of the survivability of the business, and for performance improvement opportunities - it is common for the IS function of a business to consume 10% of turnover, so many acquisitions provide opportunities for major synergystic savings within the IS arena.
SBA's Steve Burrows has been through many rounds of due diligence as part of both acquisition and disposal teams, working with some of the best known names in corporate finance, and is able to provide an expert and qualified insight beyond that provided by your legal advisors. Working directly for acquirers, or as a consultant to their lead advisors, in the process of discovery he will reveal the honest truth about the operations of the target business.
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