Financial, tax, legal and secretarial diligence are usually run by four firms reporting separately. Each report can be competent and the transaction still be mispriced, because the finding that matters sits between two of them.
A mid-market transaction typically runs four diligence workstreams: financial, tax, legal and secretarial, often with intellectual property and compliance alongside. Each is commissioned separately, each produces a report, and each report is addressed to the same buyer who now has four documents and no combined view.
Each report can be individually correct and the transaction still be mispriced. The findings that change a deal are frequently the ones that only mean something when two workstreams are read against each other.
What falls between the reports
- Legal finds a customer contract with a change-of-control clause. Financial has flagged customer concentration. Neither notes that the concentrated customer is the one who can walk.
- Tax identifies an open assessment. Financial has a provision. Nobody checks whether the provision matches the exposure.
- Secretarial finds share transfers not properly recorded. Legal is drafting warranties on title. The two never meet until completion.
- Financial normalises related-party rent. Legal reviews the lease and finds it terminable at short notice. The adjustment and the risk are the same fact, priced once.
- Intellectual property sits with a founder personally rather than the company, and the financial model assumes it transfers.
The expensive findings are rarely missed by everyone. They are found by one workstream and not read by the others.
What single-point management actually means
Not one firm doing everything — specialist work still needs specialists, and legal opinion still comes from an advocate. It means one accountable owner across the workstreams, with three things centralised.
- One issues log
Every finding from every workstream in one place, with its price and structure implication stated. This is where cross-reading happens; it cannot happen across four PDFs.
- One information request list
Consolidated before it reaches the target, so the same document is not asked for four times in four formats. This matters more than it sounds: a seller's patience is a finite resource, and burning it slows everything.
- One timetable
With the critical path visible. Workstreams have dependencies — legal often cannot conclude until financial has quantified something — and separately managed streams discover those dependencies late.
The target's experience is part of the deal
A seller answering the same question four times, from four firms, in four formats, on four timetables, becomes slower and less cooperative. That is usually read as evasiveness. Often it is just fatigue, and it is self-inflicted by the buyer's own process.
A consolidated request list and a single point of contact keep the target engaged, which keeps information flowing, which is what diligence depends on.
Where the boundary sits
We perform the financial and tax diligence directly, and coordinate the legal, intellectual property, secretarial and compliance workstreams around it. Legal opinion and drafting are provided by an independently engaged advocate; secretarial certification by a practising Company Secretary. What we own is the process, the issues log, the timetable and the reading across.