Regardless of the type of investment or business decision—when money, time, reputation, or safety is on the line—due diligence is not a perfunctory exercise to be checked off quickly. Companies and individuals regularly engage K2 Integrity investigators and business intelligence specialists for due diligence solutions—critical information that sheds light and enables a more informed decision both on value and the associated risk. Whether it be gaining insight on a prospective investment, acquisition, merger candidate, or market or the vetting of contractors, suppliers, and consultants for possible legal or regulatory breaches. From conducting pre-employment intelligence gathering on key staff or HNW inner circle reputational assessments to reviews of a merger target’s cybersecurity posture, areas of vulnerability, and threats from within, the need for relevant and comprehensive due diligence solutions that can minimize, anticipate, or avoid enterprise risk has never been greater.
We are proud of the reputation our teams have built not only for their investigative, analytic, and advisory excellence but for the independence and insight they bring to these types of investigations.
Pretransactional/Investment Intelligence
K2 Integrity’s investment due diligence process is designed to identify hidden risks and potential vulnerabilities in any business transaction. We advise a broad base of companies, investors, and advisers on a wide range of transactions. Whether our clients are considering a merger, acquisition, joint partnership, investment, or senior-level hire, we empower them with the critical intelligence they need to make key decisions with confidence.
Critically important to any investment is a thorough understanding of the drivers and dynamics of key stakeholders, including competitors, lawmakers, unions, and pressure groups. Through our network we uncover, investigate, and advise our clients on vulnerabilities not picked up in the course of quantitative or traditional investment analysis.
Background Investigations
We deliver comprehensive background information on individuals and companies around the world. Our background investigations draw from a wide variety of sources, including public records available online and through on-the-ground research. These records include litigation filings, financial records, judgments, liens, corporate records, bankruptcy proceedings, media reports, social media and many other sources.
We comb through the information we gather to identify misrepresentations, misstatements, nondisclosures of material information, patterns of unethical behavior, and other indicators that could pose risks to our clients, and we present our findings in clearly constructed, issue-driven reports.
We also offer high-quality intelligence gathered from our network of human sources around the world. Source inquiries can be useful for developing context for information surfaced in the public record, obtaining intelligence on competitors, assessing the reputations and track records of individuals or companies, and for gathering many other types of actionable information. We map the competitive landscape in order to understand where commercial advantage is gained and where threats might lie.
Investigative Approach
We tailor the scope of background investigations to the specific needs and risk profiles of each client, modifying the scope of our work to reflect the level of risk inherent in each project—which often includes a window into regulatory and litigation considerations.
We use the most sophisticated tools to gather relevant information, including hundreds of commercial and proprietary databases and other technologies aimed at identifying hard-to-find information, including data hidden in the deep web.
We approach investigations using multidisciplinary teams of experts from the top of their fields, including professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement and intelligence services, prosecutors and attorneys in private practice, journalists, academics, and technology professionals who bring their diverse perspectives and expertise to bear on every investigation.
Third-Party Vetting
In addition to the vetting of contractors, suppliers, and consultants for possible legal or regulatory breaches, investigation of the abilities of vendors to meet quality standards ensures that a company’s vendors are operating at the same standards as the company itself.
Anti-Money Laundering Know Your Customer (KYC) Compliance
In conjunction with our regulatory, compliance, and anti-money laundering (AML) professionals, we help commercial and retail banks, investment banks, financial services firms, and virtual currency exchanges meet the challenge of complying with financial crime prevention rules. Our areas of specialty include sanctions and anti-money laundering compliance—encompassing enhanced know your customer (KYC) due diligence, periodic reviews, account remediation, historical transaction reviews, AML and sanctions risk assessment, independent testing and monitoring, model validation, and AML and sanctions technology evaluation—along with fraud and antibribery/anticorruption compliance.
Reverse/Self Due Diligence
Our investigative teams are called upon by companies to perform a financial, operational and commercial assessment as a tool to determine their readiness for sale before being presented to prospective buyers.
