Commercial Due Diligence: The Key to Understanding Value in an Acquisition

Traditionally due diligence has been concerned with legal and financial investigations, where legal would include everything from property to intellectual property to anti-trust. Both legal and financial due diligence are concerned with the past, whereas the true value of a business is based on its future performance. Commercial due diligence looks at the trends in the market in which the target company operates and at the target company's competitive position. By putting the two together and combining an assessment of management's ability to deliver, the would-be acquirer can come to a robust view of future performance and therefore of value. Peter Howson's follow up to his earlier book, Due Diligence, shows how to go about collecting and analysing market and competitive data on target companies so that would-be investors can understand their true value and thereby reduce the risk of an acquisition failing.