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Acquisition Decision Diligence
Test the acquisition decision.
Before it becomes a commitment.
A buyer can commission rigorous financial, legal, commercial and operational due diligence and still leave the governing acquisition decision insufficiently challenged.
Those workstreams test important parts of the opportunity. They do not necessarily test the judgement that combines them into a decision to proceed.
A good business can still be the wrong acquisition
Test what the acquisition is meant to achieve before testing the target.
Should we acquire Company X?
Do we need this capability — and is acquisition the best route to obtain it?
Is this a good business to buy?
Is owning this business the right way to achieve the strategic or financial objective behind the acquisition?
Diligencing the target cannot answer a decision that was never properly formed.
That is Cortavian’s mandate: the acquisition decision itself.
Commitment can form before the reasoning is complete.
Acquisition processes create momentum. That is not itself a defect; progress requires attention, conviction and sustained effort.
But time already invested, sponsor expectations and management conviction can make a preferred answer progressively harder to question. Evidence may be interpreted through the acquisition thesis, while unresolved assumptions begin to be treated as established facts.
The risk is not that every process is biased or every preferred deal is wrong. It is that the combined reasoning may receive less independent challenge precisely when the cost of changing direction is increasing.
- 01Time already invested
- 02Deal momentum
- 03Sponsor expectations
- 04Management conviction
- 05Selective interpretation of evidence
- 06Assumptions treated as facts
The governing investment decision
What must be true for this acquisition to stand?
- 01
The actual investment decision.
- 02
The acquisition thesis and the assumptions on which value creation depends.
- 03
Evidence that contradicts the preferred case.
- 04
Credible alternatives, including the no-deal option.
- 05
Downside pathways and failure conditions.
- 06
The strongest reason not to proceed.
- 07
Conditions that should govern proceeding, renegotiating, pausing or withdrawing.
Across the workstreams.
Not in place of them.
Cortavian does not replace legal, financial, tax, commercial, technical or operational due diligence.
Each workstream examines a distinct part of the target or transaction. Acquisition decision diligence independently tests the combined decision constructed from those inputs: whether the evidence supports the acquisition thesis, whether the alternatives have been considered properly and what conditions should govern commitment.
Read about the wider discipline of Decision Diligence Explore how Cortavian worksIndependent executive report
One accountable recommendation.
The client receives a decision report that can be examined by the entrepreneur, sponsors and other acquisition decision-makers before commitment.
- 01
Separates what is known, assumed and unresolved.
- 02
Surfaces the strongest opposing case.
- 03
Identifies material evidence gaps.
- 04
Makes the consequences of uncertainty explicit.
- 05
Produces one accountable recommendation.
- 06
States the conditions and residual risks attached to it.
For the person who must decide whether to commit.
- 01Search fund entrepreneurs
- 02Acquisition entrepreneurs
- 03Sponsor-backed operators
- 04Decision-makers committing their own capital, investor capital or organisational capacity
Before commitment
Before you diligence the target, make sure you are diligencing the decision.
If you have a live acquisition decision worth testing, start with a confidential conversation.
contact@cortaviangroup.com