An operator's read – before the deal and after it.
Commercial and operational due diligence from someone who runs a mid-market business, rather than someone who used to.
Funds hire me for one thing: to say in writing what a target will actually do under new ownership, before the money moves. Not whether the reported numbers happened – your FDD provider verifies that. Whether they keep happening once the seller has left the building and the management team works out who they now report to.
I can answer that because I am running a business of the same size and shape while I write it, which is also why I decline anything adjacent to SOD.DEL before you name the target. There is no success fee here and no equity: an opinion that pays more when the deal closes is worth what every other opinion in your process is worth. Benelux and northern France in person, remotely anywhere a fund is buying.
- Diligence fee€9,500 fixed – the same Screening the operating companies buy
- TimingTwo to three weeks, or compressed against your exclusivity if it has to be
- DeliverableA written 10–15 page assessment with a named view, plus an IC readout
- SectorsBusiness services, facility management, catering and hospitality, logistics, light industrial
- WhereBenelux and northern France on site · remote for deals anywhere
- CapacityA handful of assignments a year, alongside a full-time CEO role
- ConflictsDeclined in writing before you name the target, wherever it touches SOD.DEL's markets
Before the deal, at signing, and after it.
The same person across all three, which is the part a fund cannot buy from a firm: whoever wrote the diligence is still there when the integration plan has to survive contact with the management team it described.
Operational due diligence
An operator's assessment of the target: management bench, unit economics, customer concentration, deferred capex, and what the integration will actually cost.
- 10–15 page written assessment with a named view
- Site visits and management meetings
- Investment-committee readout included
Portfolio integration
The hundred days after closing, run as a governed programme rather than a workstream nobody owns. Designed by me, executed by the portfolio company's own managers.
- Written plan with named owners and gates
- Synergy register your IC can interrogate
- The portfolio CEO's team trained to run the next one
Portfolio CEO support
For a newly appointed portfolio CEO, or across a buy-and-build where the work has no fixed end.
- Retainer across several bolt-ons – €7,500 a month
- Board attendance included in the retainer
The things that are true on the floor.
- Whether the management team is a team or one capable person with five direct reports who have never decided anything.
- Where margin actually comes from – by contract and by customer and by month, not by the segment split in the information memorandum.
- Which customer relationships live in a person's head rather than in a contract, and what that person's notice period is.
- What the capex line is not telling you about deferred maintenance, and when it becomes your problem rather than the seller's.
- Whether two synergies depend on the same uncosted system migration, which is the most common way a credible-looking case quietly halves.
- What the first hundred days will cost in cash and in management attention – before you price the deal, not after.
Conflict check, in writing
I name SOD.DEL's sectors, geographies and major counterparties before you tell me who the target is. If it touches them, I decline in writing and that is the end of it.
Read the room, not just the room data
The information memorandum and the data room, then management meetings and – wherever the seller allows it – a site visit. Most of what matters is visible on a site and invisible in a data room.
Write
A 10–15 page assessment: what I believe, what I am uncertain about and why, and the three things I would want re-priced or re-papered before signing.
Defend it at IC
Included in the fee, if you want the argument made by someone with no money riding on the deal closing.
The conflict policy, stated up front.
I run a company in this market. That is the reason to hire me and it is also the reason there are targets I cannot look at. SOD.DEL operates in Belgian business and facility services; anything in or adjacent to that – including a target that would become one of its customers or suppliers – is declined before you name it.
Nothing is subcontracted. No team, no offshore analyst, no third-party tool holding your data room. Mutual NDA before anything substantive, and material is destroyed at the end of the assignment.
No success fee, no equity, no percentage of anything you buy, and no day rate. A fixed fee is the only instrument here, because an opinion that pays more when the deal closes is worth what every other opinion in your process is worth.
What is commercial and operational due diligence?
Commercial and operational due diligence assesses whether a target business will keep performing under new ownership – the quality of the management team, where margin actually comes from, which relationships live in one person's head, and what the first hundred days will cost in cash and attention. It sits alongside financial due diligence, which verifies that the reported numbers happened, and answers the different question of whether they will keep happening.
What does operational due diligence cost?
€9,500 fixed, over two to three weeks, including the written assessment and the investment committee readout. It is the same Screening the operating companies buy, which is deliberate – one price, whoever is asking, and no day rate for anyone to argue about.
How is this different from a consultancy's ODD?
A consultancy sends people who have studied businesses like this one. I run one. When I write that a depot will lose two of its four shift leaders within a year of a reporting-line change, it is because I have watched it happen in my own company, not because it appeared in a benchmark. The trade-off is honest: I am one person, I take a handful of assignments a year, and there is no team behind me to scale into a four-week workstream.
How do you handle conflicts with your own company?
In writing and before you name the target. I state SOD.DEL's sectors and geographies at the outset, and I decline anything that touches them – including targets that would become customers or suppliers. That exclusion narrows what I can look at, and it is the reason the rest of what I say is worth anything.
Would you take a portfolio company board seat?
Yes, a small number, under an annual mandate: four to six meetings a year, papers commented in writing before each one, and a stated position on every decision item. Two conditions. It is cleared with my own board first, because I hold an executive seat and a non-executive mandate alongside it is their decision as much as mine. And anything touching SOD.DEL's markets is declined in writing before you name the company. Remuneration is agreed per seat rather than published. If a portfolio company needs a full non-executive director rather than an operator around the table four times a year, I will say so and introduce someone.
Thirty minutes, before the process starts.
Tell me the sector and the shape of the deal. I will tell you within the call whether I can look at it at all – which is faster than finding out three days in.