Before a North American institutional investor deepened its relationship with a pan-Asian alternative-asset manager, it wanted due diligence on the people running the fund: the key members of the management team, individually.
“Career histories were verified rather than accepted, and business interests were mapped.”
The engagement, carried out during my tenure at a global investigations firm, was built as a set of parallel background investigations: career histories verified rather than accepted, directorships and business interests mapped, litigation and regulatory records pulled, watchlist and sanctions screening run, and reputations tested through discreet inquiries with people who had dealt with each principal across the region.
Allocators reviewing a manager see audited numbers and references. From a distance, they cannot see a venture missing from a principal’s biography, a dispute settled before it reached a law report, or how counterparties regard the principal. A background check on the management team supplies that, and doing it before commitment means a finding can still change the decision.