Business Intelligence

Focused on hedge fund decision-making and management, private equity investment, distressed debt purchases and commodities trading, Diligence is committed to making its clients the best-informed investors in the world.

Leveraging successful and time-tested information collection techniques, Diligence staff members pioneered the development of proprietary intelligence collection methodologies designed exclusively to support investment decision-making. We apply this approach discreetly to address significant gaps in an investor’s understanding of an investment target, or to confirm key elements of an investment thesis. Either way, our clients gain a competitive advantage through increased confidence in investment decisions, while knowing that their legal and regulatory concerns are protected by experienced professionals with expertise in securities trading and compliance.

Successful asset managers have traditionally generated outsized returns by using superior information and specialized expertise to exploit market inefficiencies. Recent developments, however, threaten to erode this edge. Public information available on the Internet, for instance, has leveled the playing field considerably among investors; fringe areas of the market that once were the exclusive turf of innovative hedge funds have become saturated with institutional investors; and diminishing barriers to entry have led to the proliferation of funds. The result: increasingly fierce competition, and fewer market inefficiencies to exploit.

Diligence ensures that its hedge fund clients maintain an analytical edge, despite evolving challenges within the industry. With a staff that offers a unique blend of intelligence expertise and commercial experience, we can support a variety of investment decision-making strategies:

  • Equity Long/Short: Diligence collects intelligence on business practices or characteristics of a potential target company that an investor considers critical to its long or short investment decisions. Among the issues that we regularly address are revenue recognition and other accounting practices, pending litigation, the impetus for unexpected executive departures, the status and likely outcome of labor disputes, adherence to regulatory compliance, and executive misconduct.
  • Event Driven: Diligence can provide insights to help evaluate the prospects for the bankruptcy, restructuring, merger or acquisition of a target company. In addition, we can assist clients specializing in distressed debt or distressed equity, helping them understand the nature and depth of problems within troubled companies and the prospects for improvement.
  • Emerging Markets: Diligence can facilitate investor efforts to understand the business practices, performance, management integrity and risks associated with companies in emerging markets, where there is little commercial transparency and greater risks of corruption and governmental interference.
  • Activist Investors: Diligence provides advanced services for activist funds. Working with a client’s management team, public relations and legal staff, we can provide real value in supporting clients engaged in contentious and public disputes with portfolio companies. Our services might include identifying significant existing problems within a target company, assessing weaknesses within a management team, evaluating potential new management or board members, or anticipating target company responses to aggressive moves by activist investors.

At Diligence, our goal is to provide real value to our investor clients in every step of the decision-making process, reflecting our commitment to professional standards, objectivity, persistence and an entrepreneurial spirit.