Diligence request list

The written set of documents and access you ask a counterparty for, normally sent in waves rather than as one block.

Example

Wave one: ownership register, registered charges, twelve months of bank statements, revenue by customer, any litigation.

Important

Order it by what each item costs you, not by how central it is to the story. Everything cheap, fast and capable of ending the conversation belongs first.

Related terms

• Data room — The controlled repository, almost always online, where a seller places the documents a buyer has asked for.
• Due diligence — The work of independently verifying the claims made about an investment before committing money to it - the documents, the counterparties, the registrations and the numbers.
• Disclosure schedule — The document in which a seller lists the exceptions to what they are formally promising - the litigation, the defaults, the contracts that are not on standard terms.

Lessons that explain it

• The information request, and what a refusal tells you — What you ask for, and the order you ask for it in, determines what you learn. The response to the request is frequently more informative than the documents themselves. (13 min)

All 578 terms in the Investing glossary