Money matters

Everyone wants profit on their investment, but we all invest different amounts of resources in research. A modern bank or fund would be happy to invest $50 million into a venture and to spend $500 000 on a due diligence with lawyers. It would be unwilling to fork out $5000 on discreet enquiries and a chat with detectives in the FBI, Russian FSB, City of London Fraud Squad or similar. Due diligence has become ossified in its own rigorous blinkered thinking.
Fallacy: only banks, insurers, lawyers and accountants have the monopoly in professional investment knowledge.
Private investigators, from AON, Marsh, Control Risks Group, Pinkertons and Wackenhut all offer potential corporate added-value here. They also operate under the forensic accounting banner to undertake deep financial and behavioural analysis. A proper due diligence can win through more flexibility and discretion. One such due diligence by Dynegy on Enron made the correct call on risk hazard and called off the merger. It saved an unbelievable fortune.
Basel II enables Moodys and Standard & Poors, plus the corporations themselves, to certify the level of operational risk. Some groups will have become disposed towards offering a more tailored or sympathetic risk assessment. The traditional credit-rating visit cannot be so highly valued seeing that the target company has lots of advance warning. To paraphrase Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty:
You can never be sure of the direction or health of a target company, because these are directly affected by the means you use to observe them.
Newer aspects of this investigative process show that company data are more accurate and accountable when the target is completely unaware of the observation carried out by snooping. Forensic accounting comes in useful; it is more akin to industrial espionage, but the data is less likely to be compromised by a public relations exercise. These forensic agents can be employed to separate performance from ill-deserved reputation. They can take the subtle, covert observation of the subject to get closer to the truth.
Then, they can get the metaphysical corporate handcuffs on the risk-offering crook. More flexible analytical activity clearly complements the bank’s own analysts and traditional due
diligence process. Forensic accounting comes in to provide a deeper investigation. Otherwise, banks and financial companies suffer when they are still locked in a narrow corporate group- think.

No professional football player wants to stick his neck out, or his health, for more than the designated 90 minutes. Some companies are already playing close to their limits in extra time. Investors’ risk time horizons should match the risk scenario.
The sophisticated investor is already aware of these potential cash-flow problems. What is rather more galling is when cash is running dangerously short, despite all prognostications. Companies play out favourable scenarios with dwindling assets or cash. The complication arises from the chain of market players all with different risk time horizons. Everyone wants a cut or return at different times. Because investors have different entry times and various time horizons, it is no longer fitting to state as gospel truth that all long-hold investment decisions are correct. The real risk curve will change along time and market conditions; this can be startling to learn.
It is also important to recognise that the available data and the criteria for judging acceptability may change with time so that what might have been acceptable when a project was initially proposed may no longer be so several years on . . . Thus, the acceptability of the risks associated with a project must be kept under constant review throughout the life of a project.
The real risk curve will differ from the expected risk curve; sometimes, even the most respected pension fund or venerated CEO will fail hugely. An eternal buy-and-hold strategy may no longer be suitable in the modern market. Reputation risk management means that we have to separate deserved prestige from the veneer of respectability and corporate performance. CEO worship is no longer worth the votive candles burnt. The truth may be more along the lines of a real risk curve laid out for the sake of discussion.  Unfortunately, the time horizon of a CEO is usually in months and not years – this creates the need to maximise the most that can be wrung out of the firm. Thus, balance sheets can be cosmetically made up for a smoke-screen, not for the benefit of investors.