Chapter 6

Investigating the target

Introduction

You have found the ideal target, spent a long time convincing your board and financiers that it is a good buy; you have given serious thought to what you are going to do with it once it is yours and you have managed to get the seller to agree to sell. This is where it starts to get scary. How do you know that this really is what the owner cracks it up to be? How do you know it is the seller’s to sell? How do you know it does not have the corporate equivalent of dry rot? How can you be sure that all the plans you have to recoup that fancy price you are about to pay are realistic? The prospect of having to part with hard cash focuses the mind like nothing else can and one of the things you ...

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