Due Diligence

Thorough due diligence is essential both to executing successful transactions and protecting our clients’ reputations. We provide comprehensive due diligence support to operating companies and investors prior to acquisitions, joint ventures, mergers, key hires, and other transactions. We are professional, discreet, creative and exhaustive in our approach: we aim for maximum transparency and provide clients with a product that is concise and conclusive in its recommendations. Our due diligence and investigative services include:

• Examine reputations, associations, activities, and ethics of potential partners, investors or key hires.

• Confirming or refuting allegations and rumors of criminal or questionable business practices.

• Identifying, early on in the deal process, undisclosed liabilities or questionable financial reporting.

• Researching unusual offshore structures and unexplained vehicles associated with potential merger, acquisition, or joint venture targets.

• Clarify the nature of relationships between target companies and various individuals, including government officials.

• Provide a “lay of the land” for doing a deal, determining powerbases and shifting alliances. We ask: who is well connected and why? Who is on the way out? And, which relationships should be cultivated?

Regulatory Due Diligence

There is a growing demand for expertise in helping businesses cope with challenges associated with new regulatory frameworks in the United States, Europe, and beyond. New laws and practices-Sarbanes-Oxley, the Patriot Act, OECD-driven regulatory conventions-require businesses and international financial institutions alike to be sensitive to possible conflicts of interest, money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, corruption, and corporate malfeasance. With new programs for corporate sanctions now emanating from financial institutions like the World Bank and regional development banks, the need for businesses and investors to control regulatory risk has never been more pressing. Geotelligence is positioned, especially in emerging markets and on behalf of international financial institutions and multinational corporations, to respond to the new regulatory push for greater accountability and transparency.

We believe that our due diligence service is particularly well-suited for commercial and international banks and companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, mutual fund groups, asset managers, in general, and law firms assisting their clients in transnational business ventures. Geotelligence can assist companies by conducting detailed background checks on prospective business partners, clients, intermediaries, agents, mergers and acquisition participants, JV partners, fund managers, to determine relationships with politically and financially exposed persons. Appearance of, or business relationships with, any entity or person found published on a “prohibited list.” For example, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). Education and employment verification. Regulatory compliance history and investment performance and reference checks to ascertain reputation, character and ability to manage risk.