Gaining access to the right information at the right time can mean the difference between success and failure.

Depending on each individual case, we look to:

• Understand the competitor’s operational advantage
• Assess the attitudes of a regulator or local politician to a proposed merger or new factory
• Understand the dynamics at board level
• Uncover the true powerbase behind problematic activist groups
• Evaluate the quality of a company’s relationships

Aratus provides strategic insight by combining investigative capabilities and primary source research with unsurpassed analytical skills. This allows us to fuse differing data feeds in order to allow clients to understand the risks and rewards of new opportunities. In this way, our clients gain a competitive advantage through increased confidence in investment decisions.

We offer a unique blend of intelligence expertise and commercial experience that allows Aratus to support a variety of investment decision-making strategies:

• Typically, we will collect intelligence on business practices or characteristics of a potential target company that an investor considers critical to its long or short investment decisions. Among the issues that we regularly address are revenue recognition and other accounting practices, pending litigation, the impetus for unexpected executive departures, the status and likely outcome of labour disputes, adherence to regulatory compliance, licensing, and executive misconduct.
• We can facilitate investor efforts to understand the business practices, performance, management integrity and risks associated with companies in emerging markets, where there is little commercial transparency and greater risks of corruption and governmental interference.
• Our services might include identifying significant existing problems within a target company, assessing weaknesses within a management team, evaluating potential new management or board members, or anticipating target company responses to aggressive moves by investors.

Entry into new and unfamiliar markets can stretch resources and expose a company to unexpected risks, which might not only thwart a successful market entry, but could also damage a company’s global reputation.

Aratus can assist businesses by anticipating risks and providing guidance in challenging markets by leveraging from our extensive source network. This provides greater depth of analysis and insight than what is available only through publicly available sources.

In some Latin markets, the influence of unethical practices can significantly hinder a company’s ambitions, causing long-term financial and reputational damage. Once the risks are identified, we will work with the client to develop operational procedures to manage them, with a focus on the transaction going ahead, but without the risks. We focus on mapping the competitive landscape, identifying and reviewing potential partners, and assessing political, societal, economic and operational risks.

A company’s success often depends on understanding the strengths and vulnerabilities of the competition.

Aratus can identify a competitor’s key levers for success, some of which may constitute unfair advantages, such as political relationships, government subsidies, market restricting practices or even fraud.

We maintain the highest ethical and legal standards while conducting assignments. The result is actionable intelligence on which to base strategic and tactical decisions.

Traditional commercial due diligence looks at an entity’s projected performance in the context of the market and competitive landscape. In some opaque business sectors or in emerging or frontier markets where reliable information may be scarce Aratus will combine commercial due diligence with political risk assessment and reputational risk assessment to offer a unique integrated approach to Commercial Due Diligence.

This integrated approach merges Commercial Due Diligence with methodologies that reveal undisclosed liabilities, such as any history of corruption and bribery, the reputation of the company and its principals, the relationship and influence of political ties and auditors etc. This provides an accurate and true assessment of projected future income streams.

Often, our assignments will discover highly relevant, actionable information, including facts that demonstrate the opponents’ impact on shareholders, track record of value creation or destruction as well as criminal convictions, regulatory violations, false claims of employment and academic degrees, intentional omissions of adverse employment histories, significant judgments, undisclosed litigation, business associations, conflicts of interest and shareholder agreements.

We also advise clients on defensive measures to fend off opponents’ investigative strategies.