| Summer 2007 - An Overview of Operational Due Diligence |
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Welcome to our first newsletter! Charlie Reid & Associate is the only firm in North America focused exclusively on providing investors with operational due diligence for manufacturing or technically based companies. With a newly refreshed web site (www.charliereid.com) and two articles published in the Mergers & Acquisitions Journal, I thought it might be time for a different approach to reaching our growing client base of Private Equity, Mezzanine Debt, and Venture Capital investors. Enter the wide distribution e-newsletter. The Plan is to issue one every quarter or so; each one covering one aspect of operational due diligence in some detail. The first instalment comes in the form of an article recently published in the Mergers & Acquisitions Journal, April 07 edition. The article, entitled "Serious Tire Kicking for Sizing Up the Shop Floor" (download the pdf version of this article - 508KB), is a broad overview of the technical due diligence process. It is meant to provide Private Equity investors with general guidelines for approaching operational due diligence in mature manufacturing companies including whether or not you really need to worry about it at all for a particular target. Upcoming issues will deal with operational due diligence for early stage/emerging technology companies, bridging the language barriers between operations and finance, approaches to evaluating CAPEX, techniques for dollarizing open capacity, getting technical content into deal context, and many others. I hope you find this and future articles useful. I would also urge you to visit www.charliereid.com to check out the new look and feel of the site and become reacquainted with our service offering. That's it for now. Your feedback on the new web site, the article, this e-newsletter or any other matter would be welcomed and appreciated. Charlie |