January 1, 2025

The biggest losses in institutional finance are entirely lawful. A forensic pension investigator on fee layers, missing documents and the advisers paid to not look hard.

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June 29, 2023

In “Beware of deal-killers: Six common due-diligence pitfalls”, published on Canadian Family Offices, Tobias Jaeger of Falcone International names the six places family offices most often lose money: the management team, co-investors, regulatory change, third-party vendors, the deal structure itself, and cultural and language gaps. Each one is straightforward to check and routinely skipped, usually because the deal is already moving.

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June 15, 2023

ESG has moved from a reporting exercise to a due diligence question: investors, lenders, and acquirers now price environmental, social, and governance failures much as they price financial ones. That shifts the burden onto verification — whether the claims in the report survive being checked. This piece covers what ESG risk looks like in practice, and where the gap between stated policy and actual conduct tends to open.

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May 23, 2023

A practical guide to checking managers, co-investors and ownership before committing capital. Learn how to define the scope, assess sources and bring unresolved questions into the investment decision.

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March 9, 2023

An investment firm had capital on the table and a concern about where it had come from. Declining is expensive and visible; accepting the wrong money is expensive, invisible, and permanent. How three independent lines of inquiry converged on the same answer while the firm still had the choice.

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