M&A Due DIligence Toolkit

Eight financial due diligence frameworks. One real-deal case study. Built from 30+ years of executing live M&A and private equity transactions.

Why does a deal that looked clean in the model so often unravel between signing and closing? Because the model rests on assumptions that haven't been stress-tested by anyone who's actually done the work.

This toolkit closes that gap. The same material that runs through the Investment Banking Practitioner's Handbook Series — distilled into a practical, desk-ready pack you can pull out for the next deal.

Inside the toolkit:

• The Complete M&A Due Diligence Process Map — the full workflow from initial review to final closing checks, with the workstreams that matter at each stage
• How to Read a Quality of Earnings Report Like a Practitioner — what to look for first, what the seller's adviser is hoping you miss, the pages that decide the deal
• Revenue Quality: The Four-Dimension Framework — concentration, retention, durability, and pricing power, scored the way buyers actually score them
• EBITDA Adjustments: The Three Tests — the practical filters that separate legitimate normalisations from creative accounting
• The Working Capital Peg That Costs Buyers Millions — how the peg is set, where it gets gamed, the calculations every analyst should run before signing
• EBITDA-to-Free-Cash-Flow Bridge — the line items most analysts skip and why every one of them matters in the final price
• Five Cash Flow Traps That Destroy Deals — the patterns that look fine in the model but unravel between signing and closing
• The Enterprise-to-Equity Bridge — cash, debt, debt-like items, and the adjustments that move the headline price from offer to wire

Plus the complete Summit Industrial Services case study — canonical numbers, EBITDA bridges, working capital analysis, and the enterprise-to-equity bridge that thread every framework into one real-deal walkthrough.

Written by John Colley — Cambridge MA, MBA with Distinction (Bayes Business School), 30+ years in investment banking, M&A and private equity at SG Cowen, WestLB, Hoare Govett, and his own boutique firms. Author of The Investment Banking Practitioner's Handbook Series.

For mid-career analysts, associates, and VPs in investment banking, private equity, and corporate finance who want to do due diligence the way practitioners actually do it — not the way it's described in textbooks.

127 pages. Free download. No credit card.