Dealing with commercial, contractual or personal disputes often means dealing with high stakes. As disputes arise, it is important to gather critical facts, assess the strengths and weaknesses of your position, and develop a plan to settle or prevail. Disputes can involve complex economic, financial and technical issues. They can also involve multiple languages, client locations and applicable laws and standards. In such situations, you need a knowledgeable and expert advisor to find solutions.
Our Dispute Advisory team is well-equipped to help you, providing resolution through robust, compelling arguments on the financial, economic and accounting aspects of a case. We can support you in litigation, arbitration, mediation or other forms of alternative dispute resolution. With a sharp and well-informed insight, we can help to reduce the potential adverse financial, reputational or operational impacts for you.
Our UK team of experienced forensic accountants has an established track record of working on a variety of cases. From smaller, local matters to high-profile, large-scale, international disputes, they have done it all. Our forensic claims experts have given oral evidence in the UK and internationally, in cases with claims ranging from under £100,000 to over £1 billion.
Our dispute advisory services
We can provide assistance through every stage of your dispute including investigation assistance, data analysis and e-disclosure. From the outset we provide early assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of your case and an appreciation of the key issues. We will provide robust advice and reporting suitable for non-technical audiences and covering all aspects from damages assessment needs to accounting liability in accounting and auditor claims.
We can help you across a range of areas, including:
- Breach of contract
- Shareholder disputes
- Transaction, warranty and completion account disputes
- Expert determinations
- Expropriations
- Business interruption and other insurance claims
- Product recall
- Compulsory purchase orders
Our experience
Complex commercial disputes
Our Dispute Advisory team has a strong reputation for delivering robust assessments across a wide range of commercial disputes and industries. Our experience includes matters such as breach of contract, shareholder disputes, compulsory purchase compensation, business interruption and product recall.
Our team includes seasoned accounting, valuation and economics experts, and we draw upon specialist technical expertise and sector knowledge from our global network of firms.
We can be instructed on an individual case-by-case basis or on larger-scale matters involving multiple claims, for example, regulatory remediation or compensation programmes. Depending on your requirements, we can provide input throughout the lifecycle of a dispute, from early-stage advice to inform your dispute strategy or settlement negotiations, through to expert witness reports and oral testimony.
Deal disputes
We have extensive experience of disputes arising from business transactions, (including acting as the expert determiner independent of buyers and sellers). We can support you with the preparation or review of completion/earn-out accounts and dispute or objection notices. We can also provide help with commercial settlement negotiations or presenting your case before an independent accountant or expert determiner. In many cases, we have been appointed as an independent accountant to carry out expert determinations.
We can also assess warranty claims. These could include claims related to warranted financial statements being “true and fair” or where a counterfactual valuation of the subject business is required.
We can also bring our skills to bear before disputes arise, by helping you, whether as a the buyer or seller, with your strategy before the agreement of a deal. In post-deal matters, we can work on completion accounts, earn-out accounts and leakage reviews.
Professional negligence
We are well-versed with the duties and standards of care owed by professional advisers. This enables us to express opinions on liability, as well as quantum of loss, in claims relating to the conduct and competence of accountants, auditors, actuaries and financial services professionals. Our Dispute Advisory team has a significant track record of dealing with the specialist and financial aspects of professional negligence disputes.
Private client disputes
Our team has a wealth of experience in working with private clients involved in disputes, for example, in relation to contentious probate or matrimonial matters.
As expert advisors, we can assist in the review of financial disclosure and codifying questions for the other party and undertake comprehensive forensic investigations and asset-tracing exercises. We have significant experience in valuing unquoted shares or family businesses in a variety of complicated complex scenarios and are frequently asked to comment on the potential liquidity of business assets to inform settlement strategies. As an advisor or an expert, we produce clear, concise reports to meet your needs and facilitate informed settlement discussions.
