Commercial Forecasting in Uncertain Times

When searching for an investment opportunity, it was typical for investors to use static models, which span numerous years, to determine the best investment opportunities. Some may have even used ‘gut feeling’ as a justification for their investment choices. ‘Gut feeling’ is a primitive concept in a now quantitative world that values undisputable data; times […]
Is Fast Food Becoming a Healthy Sector for Investors?

Over the last few years, a swathe of new fast food brands have popped up. These new brands aim to cater to changing attitudes towards healthy eating and dietary choices. The traditional players in the fast food space, those widely perceived to offer ‘unhealthy’ meals, are beginning to alter their menus, too. Healthy choices seem […]
Easy to be eco-friendly – why should investors care?

Last week, onefourzero published an article on growing demand and investment in the home automation sector. One area of home automation that consumers favoured were products that helped them save energy as well as money, such as smart meters. Today’s consumer is more environmentally conscious than ever before. Searches on Google for the term “eco-friendly” […]
Who is looking at Digital Due Diligence and why?

Without meaning to be too self-aggrandising, we do think digital data is the bees knees. Digital data is useful for consumer-facing businesses for obvious reasons. To better your offer as a B2C company, you want to know what your consumers think about you, your competitors and their preferences. The beauty of ‘big data’, specifically online […]
IM to be believed? Testing the numbers with Digital Due Diligence

When a private company is being sold via an auction process, an Information Memorandum (IM) – otherwise known as the ‘book’ – serves to encourage offers by providing prospective buyers with key information. IMs are also used when a company is seeking to raise finance and encourage investment. Buyers rely on IMs to give an […]
Private Equity: a victim of its own success?

Looking back: our reflections on the financial year 2016-2017 in the mid-market private equity market. “The continued fall out of the financial crisis combined with a year of political uncertainty across some of the biggest markets in the developed world have altered the characteristics of M&A activity. The political change we have seen worldwide over […]
Looking back on investment year 2016-17: How Private Equity Fell in Love with Digital

The continued fall out of the financial crisis combined with a year of political uncertainty and limited GDP growth have altered the characteristics of M&A activity. With limited market growth fund managers are holding on to assets for longer and (possibly not through choice) are taking the time to improve their assets. Therefore, the last […]
Update: Is Britain still good for business now that Article 50 has been triggered?

As our November analysis showed, the low value of the pound post Brexit resulted in a 500% increase in inbound searches for flights and hotels. This finding was in line with ForwardKey’s tourism market analysis report, which showed an immediate increase in international net bookings for arrival in the UK. According to Google Trend data, […]
Cinven, Permira and Mid Europa acquires Allegro, “Eastern Europe’s EBAY” for $3.25bn

Cinven, Permira and Mid Europa Team up for $3.25bn Allegro Deal Eastern Europe’s largest e-commerce platform has been bought by a group of private equity investors in a $3.25bn bet on the rise of internet retail in the continent’s emerging economies. The deal is another example of private equity firms teaming up for billion dollar […]
Could these companies’ downfall have been predicted had they paid closer attention?

Is it me or are there too many large commercial entities who are not diligent about their own diligence? Whilst commerce is fraught with danger and risk is unavoidable, risk appreciation and assessment can always be improved. Prevention is better than cure and the best cures are swift. Therefore, observing and staying on top of everything […]