Forensic Due Diligence

White-collar crime and other misconduct before or during M&A transactions can lead to financial damage, loss of reputation, fines and protracted litigation.

To minimise risks, it is essential to identify anomalies in the transaction process and address control weaknesses.

Forensic due diligence is the examination of an organisation and its assets - for potential red flags of fraudulent activity. Before, during and after a transaction, we support you in identifying potential risks as well as in efficiently structuring the integration process from a preventive point of view.

In addition to forensic interviews, extensive structured and unstructured data as well as documents of the target organisation are analysed and examined at transaction level to identify potential red flags such as conspicuous transactions, incomplete or falsified documentation.

We offer an approach tailored to your company and your challenges:

• Identification of potential corporate and personal interdependencies as well as integrity-critical characteristics of acting companies/individuals within the scope of a comprehensive background investigation

• Identification, prioritisation and benchmarking of specific risks as well as identification of regulatory action requirements through analysis of guidelines, process mining techniques (digital process analysis), online surveys of core processes and (forensic) interviews.
• Forensic Transaction Testing: Identification of relevant balance sheet and P&L accounts as well as data-driven analysis of risk-relevant areas, for example other expenses, donations and sponsoring as well as carrying out a cash flow, turnover and accounts payable and receivable analysis.

• Final assessment of the risks and preparation of a mitigation plan
• Follow-up of open points of the pre-signing phase
• Support in the fulfilment of the closing conditions
• Development of tailor-made prevention concepts and support in the design of guidelines, processes and controls as well as in the establishment of whistleblower and third-party risk management systems 
• Carrying out forensic risk assessments for processes and companies in Germany and abroad that could not be examined (in detail) before the closing.

• Accompanying a comprehensive mitigation of the risks uncovered in the course of the forensic due diligence and the further transaction processes as well as in the implementation of further risk-reducing measures (e.g. training to raise risk awareness and promote integrity, integrity measurements).