Financial Due Diligence

Every acquisition is priced on numbers the seller prepared. Financial due diligence is the discipline of finding out what those numbers actually contain: how much of the EBITDA is repeatable, what the working capital really needs to be, what hides in 'net debt' beyond the bank loans, and whether the forecast is a plan or a hope. Deals rarely fail on what the accounts show; they fail on what the accounts absorbed quietly.

Acumon's FDD is built for owner-managed and mid-market deals: focused scope agreed around what would genuinely change your decision, partner attention throughout, and findings that arrive as negotiating material — price adjustments, warranty points, completion mechanics — rather than a hundred pages of caveats.

Quality of Earnings

The heart of FDD is normalising EBITDA: stripping one-off gains and costs, correcting owner-related economics — salaries above or below market, family members on the payroll, personal costs through the business — testing revenue recognition where judgement lives, and identifying earnings that will not survive the change of ownership: a customer relationship that is really a friendship, supplier terms that die with the seller. The output is maintainable earnings — the number the multiple should actually be applied to — with every adjustment evidenced.

Working Capital and Net Debt

More value is won and lost in completion mechanics than most buyers expect. We establish what normal working capital genuinely is across the cycle — not the flattering snapshot the seller chose — and build the net debt schedule beyond the obvious: deferred consideration from the seller's own past deals, dilapidations, unpaid tax and VAT, holiday pay accruals, customer deposits. Each item found before completion moves price or protection; found after, it is simply your cost.

Forecasts, Systems and the Post-Deal Reality

Where price rests on the future — earn-outs, growth cases, lender covenants — we test the forecast's architecture: whether history supports the assumed trajectory, which assumptions carry the model, and how sensitive value is to each. We also look at what you inherit operationally: the finance function's strength, system quality, and the reporting you will need from day one — because an acquisition that completes and then goes dark for three months burns value faster than any diligence finding.

Findings You Can Negotiate With

Reporting is built around decisions: a short executive view of the issues that move price or terms, quantified adjustments to earnings, working capital and debt, and the specific protections — warranties, indemnities, completion account definitions — each finding justifies. We work alongside your lawyers on the SPA mechanics and speak directly to lenders where the deal is funded. Where our tax due diligence and commercial due diligence run in parallel, one team reports the whole picture.

What You Get With Acumon

• Quality of earnings with every EBITDA adjustment evidenced
• Normalised working capital established across the full trading cycle
• Net debt built beyond the bank loans — the completion-account version
• Revenue recognition and customer concentration tested properly
• Forecast architecture and earn-out mechanics stress-tested
• Finance function and systems assessed for day-one ownership
• Findings translated into price, warranty and SPA mechanics
• Partner-led throughout, coordinated with tax and commercial DD

Why Acumon for Financial Due Diligence?

• Partner-led transaction support for owner-managed and mid-market deals
• Tax due diligence, commercial due diligence and valuations specialists in the same firm
• ICAEW-registered audit practice behind the analysis — evidence discipline as standard
• All 90 of the firm's professionals are based in the UK

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.