Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance Service
Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance Services in the UAE
Take control of your sale process, instead of leaving your business’s story to the buyer’s due diligence team.
Management teams considering a disposal need to optimise their decision’s outcome, but preparing for a sale requires time-consuming preparation and expert management. Farahat & Co.’s Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance services complement your existing resources and skills, helping you address the matters and challenges that come with a disposal process.
- Sell-side specialists, with broad experience supporting divestitures across multiple industries
- Flexible scope, engaged as extensively or as narrowly as your specific situation requires
- Coordinated support across financial, tax, commercial and operational review
Our dedicated professionals help you establish effective, efficient ways of identifying and resolving the issues management commonly faces during a disposal.
What Is Vendor Due Diligence?
In an M&A context, “vendor” refers to the seller, not a supplier. Vendor Due Diligence (VDD) is due diligence commissioned by the seller on their own company, conducted before the sale process begins, rather than due diligence a buyer performs on a target. This is a different concept from supplier or procurement due diligence, which assesses the risk of an external vendor relationship.
VDD gives sellers a consistent, independently verified data set to share with all potential acquirers, rather than each bidder running its own separate investigation. This supports the figures, facts, and data presented in the sales memorandum, gives buyers certainty about the target’s financial position and cash flow, and helps sellers identify significant liabilities and risk issues before they surface during a buyer’s own review.
When Vendor Due Diligence Is Necessary
Vendor Due Diligence is a key part of a successful sale process, and it is particularly valuable in situations such as:
- A competitive auction process involving numerous potential purchasers, where consistent data reduces the burden of responding to multiple parallel due diligence requests
- Disruption to the business must be avoided, since VDD limits repeated management time spent fielding buyer questions
- Privacy and confidentiality are critical and the transaction timetable is tight
- The disposal is complex, and the seller needs to retain control over the volume and nature of information requests from potential purchasers
- Due diligence is a pre-requisite for bidders, meaning buyers will not submit a serious offer without an independently verified information base
What Our Vendor Due Diligence Service Covers
Our comprehensive Vendor Due Diligence service draws on our team’s extensive disposal process experience to help you structure efficient carve-outs, divestitures, or full-business sales. Depending on the requirements of vendors and bidders, our scope typically covers:
- Financial (historical and future): verification of past financial performance and the reasonableness of forward-looking projections.
- Tax: identification of tax exposures, liabilities, and structuring considerations relevant to the transaction.
- Strategic and commercial: market position, customer concentration, and the sustainability of the business’s competitive position.
- Operational: internal processes, systems, and organisational structure relevant to a buyer’s post-completion planning.
We work closely with clients throughout the process, enabling you to retain control and reduce disruption to your ongoing business operations.
Vendor Assistance Services
Our Vendor Assistance service optimises efficiencies in disposals through coordinated, tailored support that complements your existing resources and skills, addressing issues and challenges throughout the transaction process.
As with our Vendor Due Diligence service, our involvement can be as extensive or limited as your situation demands, maximising the value we add while minimising unnecessary cost. Our Vendor Assistance service includes:
- Project management
- Transactional readiness review
- Portfolio review
- Commercial or operational review
- Planning and implementation of separation
- Tax review and structuring
- Treasury support
- Advisory on final reporting procedures
Beyond these core areas, our Vendor Assistance team also supports the preparation of historical financial information using analytical tools, develops a clear, well-supported financial plan for how the remaining business will operate post-divestiture, and identifies and resolves issues early to avoid unnecessary delays that could jeopardise the deal.
Benefits of Vendor Due Diligence for Sellers
A well-executed Vendor Due Diligence process gives sellers meaningful advantages over an unmanaged sale process.
- Control over the sale narrative: conducting due diligence proactively lets you shape how the business’s story is told, rather than reacting to a buyer’s independent findings.
- Reduced pricing pressure: by identifying and addressing weaknesses upfront, sellers are in a stronger position to resist buyers using unexpected findings to negotiate the price down.
- Faster, more competitive process: consistent, pre-verified information supports a shorter due diligence period for each bidder, encouraging genuine competitive tension.
- Added credibility: independently prepared information carries more weight with buyers than management-prepared figures alone.
- Early identification of deal risks: issues discovered during VDD can be addressed before the process begins, rather than derailing negotiations partway through.
Why Choose Farahat & Co. for Vendor Due Diligence
Farahat & Co.’s Vendor Due Diligence and Vendor Assistance services help private equity funds and corporate clients gain a competitive advantage, achieve a fully priced, clean divestment, and extract full value from the transaction.
- Sell-side specialisation: dedicated professionals with operational and financial disposal expertise, distinct from our buy-side Acquisition Due Diligence team.
- Flexible engagement: scope is tailored to your specific transaction, avoiding unnecessary services or expenditure.
- Full disposal lifecycle support: from initial preparation through Vendor Assistance workstreams to closing.
- Coordination with related services: our vendor-side work connects directly with our Transaction Advisory, Valuation, and SPA Advisory teams.
- Established track record: over four decades supporting UAE businesses through complex financial transactions.
We optimise the outcome of your divestment decision and manage the time and resources needed for disposal preparation, helping you achieve the highest value from your transaction.