Professional Certificate in Due Diligence & Business Valuation

Overview

Even in tough times companies will continue to carry out Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). However, today's difficult financial environment will put added pressure on companies (for their deals) to enhance shareholder value. Managers who are relying on new strategies will find themselves racing against the clock to prove that their value proposition is real and to satisfy the terms being enforced by lenders. In addition, the softer economic times will place more importance on faster implementation of revenue synergies and cost-reduction initiatives. Any deviations between actual results and the original forecasts will place increased scrutiny on a transaction's economics. What this means for acquirers is that achieving success in today's environment is both more important and more challenging. Since many companies have not historically been successful at creating shareholder value through M&As, management teams need to quickly focus on how to improve their M&A approach.

The good news, however, is that there are still some companies that have proven how to continually succeed with M&As. Many of these companies share certain organisational characteristics – ranging from how they operate to how their teams are structured. These commonalities suggest there are a few specific measures an organisation can adopt to greatly improve its results. We will examine the most meaningful differences between the successful M&A teams and the rest of the market and focus on understanding the practical side of these operational and organisational characteristics, so that any company can quickly implement these leading practices and increase its success rates.

Management's challenge is to beat the market odds and execute deals that deliver the value investors demand – this course will introduce you to the skills that help you make successful transactions even in tough times, including Due Diligence and business valuation techniques.

Who Should Attend

This course has been designed for those working within all finance, investment and legal departments as well as non-finance departments of medium to large corporates who are entrusted with the task of Due Diligence and/or Valuation, and wish to consolidate their knowledge to make intelligent and successful investment decisions and transactions to add value to their organisation.

Attendees who have benefitted from this course in the past have included Divisional Directors responsible for Finance, Strategy, Legal, Sales and Marketing, Operations, Human Resources, Information Technology, as well as the Executive Office.

Benefits of Attending

1. Appraise the quality and reliability of information following an efficient process
2. Identify and verify worthwhile investment opportunities
3. Analyse the financial and commercial aspects of an entity
4. Identify and overcome the most common Due Diligence pitfalls
5. Learn how to perform Due Diligence to win
6. Understand the concepts of business valuation and appreciate valuation drivers
7. Appreciate the importance of understanding cost of capital and how this impacts valuation
8. Explore new business strategies and synergies in the commercial, operational, HR or IT areas, in order to maximise business value from Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As)
9. Learn the standards of business valuation and specific methods for investments in start-ups