According to Bob Horstmeyer, Managing Director at GrowthPoint Technology Partners, the due diligence checklist can consist of anywhere from 10 to 30 pages of questions – often times several hundred questions that ask about every contract the companies had, all of your legal documentation, your employees, intellectual property, manufacturing processes, pretty much every question you can imagine about how the company has operated, the history of the company, and all the documents associated with company in the past.
Due diligence checklists are fairly extensive lists of all the items any buyer would want to see and get into prior to acquiring the company to make sure that they’re getting what they think they’re getting and avoiding any liabilities that might exist that will cause problems for them in the future.
Due diligence checklists are usually tailored; they’re very specific to the company being acquired. Some of the questions are common, about the legal documentation of the company, but every company is different and the due diligence checklists are different.