From optimising outcomes to managing risks, our capabilities help clients understand and uncover the financial DNA of businesses earlier, so they can make informed decisions that maximise their sale or purchase. With depth of thought and a wealth of knowledge, we’re focused on providing high-quality, broad perspectives to help solve a breadth of complex problems, while surfacing confident answers at pace and under pressure.
Let us help
Whether you’re a buyer or seller, PwC’s Transaction Services team can help strategically review all deal transactions and financial and operational assumptions to provide an independent view of a transaction. We perform due diligence early in the process for both buyers and sellers.
We’re at the forefront of every engagement. A trusted advisor for our teams, we work together as one-Deals, to connect our clients to the right solutions to support their transactions. As a community of solvers across both Deals and PwC, we deliver sustained financial outcomes through smart investment decisions. Our connected expertise means we’re able to delve deeper and faster into the core of a financial analysis, while providing the independence required to challenge insights with confidence.
- Deals Analytics
- Buy side due diligence
- Vendor due diligence (VDD)
- Sale and purchase agreements (SPA)
- Vendor assistance (VA)
Deals Analytics
Our Deals Analytics team embeds data and analytics across the Deals lifecycle, including:
Pre-deal: working with our M&A specialists to help unpick key trends in the business and substantiate them in marketing materials (i.e. information memorandum).
Deal execution: working with financial and commercial diligence specialists to get deeper into data – both from the business itself (e.g. Point of Sales system) and third-party data (e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics).
Post-deal: working with our Deals clients (generally private equity firms) to maximise value from their investments.
In order to deliver this type of work, we’ve also developed and deployed a market-leading proprietary data platform. The Decision Analytics Platform (DAP) is a cloud-based solution that enables businesses to quickly turn client data into structured data cubes for quick and efficient analysis. The platform offers a user-friendly interface and generates industry-specific, analytical outputs that can be easily shared and/or further customised if needed.
Buy side due diligence
Buy side due diligence is a full and thorough review of the target company that a buyer wants to acquire. In this instance, if you’re a buyer, you need to get a full understanding of the target company and the situation it’s in. Buy side due diligence runs through all business areas of a company. We’ll analyse and validate key assumptions you’re making when doing a deal. This allows you to understand what you’re buying, modify your valuation, negotiate terms, structure your deal, and plan your integration.
Vendor due diligence (VDD)
The seller (or vendor) asks us to act independently, provide business due diligence on what they’re selling before we share our findings with potential buyers. Both the seller and the buyer benefit from a vendor due diligence. The seller benefits because they are made aware of issues early on, and their management team will not be inundated with several potential purchasers. The buyer will save time and costs of doing this diligence. VDD offers vendors greater control and positioning over the sales process and timing.
Sale and purchase agreements (SPA)
Our business purchase and sale agreement service helps clients with:
- Getting the most out of the completion mechanism options
- Focusing in on the value impact of working capital and net debt
- Drafting the key financial aspects of the SPA
- Preparing/reviewing completion accounts and negotiating completion accounts disputes.
Vendor assistance (VA)
Our vendor assistance services support our clients to get ready for due diligence. For example, we can prepare a ‘fact book’ – something similar to a VDD – but it does not include our views. Potential buyers and their advisors can then do their diligence – using the fact book as a starting point.
