Deal Week noted recently that every silver lining has a cloud attached – and so it would appear with corporate auctions, the transactions that are driving much of what passes for European M&A these days.
The cloud in question is the fast-growing popularity of vendor due diligence reports, which the investment banks running the current wave of auction-driven deals are pushing for. These require the vendor’s counsel to produce an all-purpose document for the bidders – an innovation that is supposed to speed up the auction process. Unsurprisingly, legal advisers are rather less enthusiastic than bankers about the whole idea as it involves them taking on liabilities from third parties.
