847.849.2800
Contact
Maribeth Vander Weele once saved a client from a disastrous $250 million deal. The client was $90 million into the deal when intuition told him something was wrong and he hired her firm to do a fraud risk assessment. Ten days later, her firm had “put together enough red flags about that individual” that the client was able to withdraw from the deal without losing a dime. A year and half later, law enforcement investigated, shut down the company, and sent the leaders to prison, she says.
Wander Weele, whose company, The Vander Weele Group, now specializes in oversight of large-scale grant programs for government agencies, says that more people need to do “pre-diligence.” That is the deep dive into the background of the partners that will tell you whether they are people you want to do business with.
“People come to us when they have some intuition about a deal. Everything else looks good in the deal, but that intuition is kicking in. We deep dive the internet. We put together facts, dive through thousands of references to that individual or company, and put together a story of who this person really is,” she told Robert Jordan, CEO of InterimExecs in an interview.
In another case, her team investigated a company that grew from $27 million to $300 million very quickly — an unbelievable feat given the company’s limited infrastructure. Learning that requires looking beyond the usual data points of the financials.
