Due diligence is a comprehensive examination of an entrepreneur’s situation. During it, a team of auditors consisting of specialists in their respective industries analyses the condition of the entrepreneur from financial, commercial, fiscal, technological and legal perspective.
The legal due diligence offered by our law firm may serve to assess the legal position of a company for its internal control needs, however it more often precedes a capital investment by a private investor or equity fund.
Due diligence covers the auditors’ usual designated areas, covering the main areas of risk facing the company. These are:
- corporate matters, in which we examine the structure of the entity, the competences of the bodies, the capital links, the steps to be taken when issuing new shares, e.g. ensuring that priority rights are waived, modifying existing arrangements between shareholders,
- contracts with counterparties or, more broadly, the relationships and commercial conditions under which the entity operates, the relationships and possible risks, for example, of contractual impermanence or contractual sanctions,
- financial matters, in which we determine, from a primarily legal point of view, the company’s financial position, loan and credit obligations and their detailed content, including, above all, from the point of view of the risks of default,
- intellectual property protection issues, in which we determine the situation of the entrepreneur in relation to the intellectual property rights he uses in his activity, including the legality of the use of objects of copyright, the situation related to the security of the trademark, the effectiveness of the acquisition of rights to IP considered by the entrepreneur as his property,
- labour matters, where we determine the number and structure of employment, and examine the contractual terms of the various forms of employment,
- court proceedings and administrative audits – as part of the audit, we analyse all pending court cases identified by the auditors as meeting the criterion of relevance to the entrepreneur’s activity or to the planned transaction,
- particular, activity-specific problem areas, e.g. waste management in the case of a manufacturing company or the relevant permits for companies specialising in the employment of workers.
We present the results of the survey in clear reports, the conclusions of which are adopted as pre- or post-closing recommendations.
