[Christopher Westerlund]

Something I keep coming back to from the DD material: IP and environmental are taught as “other” due diligence areas, but they’re often the ones that actually kill deals. Contaminated land carries retroactive liability, and an IP right that doesn’t transfer can remove the entire reason for buying the company in the first place. Yet both tend to get picked up late, once the commercial and financial work is well advanced and a price is more or less fixed in everyone’s head. Part of that is cost, since nobody wants to pay for soil sampling on a deal that may never happen. Has anyone here seen these pulled forward into the early screen, and did it save money or just add expense to deals that were going to die anyway?

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