ABSTRACT
Commercial due diligence (CDD) gets its information from published sources but, more importantly, by talking to knowledgeable people in the same market as the target. The aim of CDD should be to give comfort that the deal actually works. In exchange, the CDD team can find and provide a wider range of estimates of market size and future growth rates which the financial due diligence team can plug into their forecasts and scenarios. CDD is carried out by a bewildering range of organizations and who to use may differ according to the nature and requirements of the acquiring company. CDD is a process which can be applied to industries almost universally. Most CDD projects starts with discussions with the target's management. A former employee can be the single most valuable source of information in a CDD exercise. Any former employees of the target in the buyer's organization are obvious sources of information.
