Due Diligence Checklist for SMB Acquisitions
A detailed due diligence checklist for SME acquisitions covering financial, legal, operational, and tax review across share and asset deals in the UK.
## Why most DD engagements fail before they start Most SMB due diligence engagements I have seen failed for the same reason: the buyer treated DD as a confirmation exercise instead of an interrogation. They scoped narrowly, they trusted the seller's data room at face value, and they relied on a single junior associate at a mid-tier accounting firm to produce a 40-page report that nobody read carefully. Six months after closing, the customer concentration nobody pressed on becomes a 30% revenue drop, or the working capital "norm" turns out to have been window-dressed in the three months before …