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About Us

NED helps directors, partners and non-executive directors in legal services and compliance services markets with fixed fee business intelligence.

We never dilute your equity in any way. We always enhance Enterprise Value.

Confidentiality is a way of life for us and our track record is impeccable.

We have no axe to grind – we are truly independent and what you see is genuinely what you get – no hidden commissions or hand-offs.

In a complex industry - we tell it straight. We believe that:

NED’s directors are specialists in what they do. We are line directors first with decades of experience in growing legal services and compliance businesses. We have been the GC’s buying professional services, the principals in M&A deals, and the negotiators on behalf of the industry with Government departments and EU regulators. From start-ups to charities, small private groups and listed conglomerates – we’ve been there. We know content, advisory, consulting, software and legal and compliance services businesses at first hand. We’re here to help.

 

Business Intelligence from NED

We offer support in a number of ways.

Register

Register on the NED site and we’ll keep you abreast of new Reports and developments and you will be eligible for some special offers. This also gives you access to all of our business intelligence reports to purchase on an as-you-go basis to give you timely and extensive project support.

  NED Confidential Email Unlimited Advice Dashboards Due Diligence Profiles Market Reports Master Classes
Register Free X X Pay As You Go Pay As You Go Pay As You Go Pay As You Go
Confidante
£600 pa
Included Included Pay As You Go Pay As You Go Pay As You Go Pay As You Go
Mentor
£800 pa
Included Included Included Included Pay As You Go Pay As You Go
NED
£100 pm
Included Included Included Included Included 10% Discount

NED Confidential

Let us be your ‘confidante’, and with the email and advisory service you see all the market events in their context; quantified and benchmarked.

NED Mentor

Engage with us as a Mentor and you get unlimited access to the Dashboard and Due Diligence Profiles whenever you need them. Check the rumours with the facts.

Your Non-Exec (NED)

Sign up your very own non-executive director as the NED service, however, and we can also be your very own confidante, mentor and sounding board. The NED service includes all of the resources you’ll need to manage changes in your market and is our long term commitment to support you in your most difficult decisions. In addition to the advice, updates and due diligence reports, you get full access to the major economic analyses of the market providing detailed long term benchmarks and M&A insights. This service requires an agreed number of logins and a long term commitment, but payments can be made by standing order or by credit card.

 

Confidante

Confidente

Keeping an eye on competitors and corporate finance issues is made easy with the Confidential Email updates.

We keep these are short cover issues as they arise, typically weekly or fortnightly. The focus is on significant corporate finance or market events. No gossip; just facts, backed and quantified. Links ensure you can click straight through to the source. We track every firm, every deal, all investor relations events and notifications, etc. But we feed back only the interesting stuff; most of what passes for ‘news’, isn’t. We sift out the distractions and raise the profile of some you may have missed. Others review the press releases about product launches, client wins etc: we focus on the stuff that costs real money or involves real risk. We cover everyone, so you’ll see what bankers, VCs, competitors and other analysts will be saying about you too.

Call or Email – Any Time

A confidential helpline so you can chat through your worry list.

You can call us at any time to discuss any of the developments highlighted in Reports or Heads Up emails. We’ll help you examine their significance to you and your plans. We are happy to mentor, teach, advise and support everyone for whom economics, market dynamics, corporate finance analysis, M&A, investment and due diligence is not their primary role. We are experienced in all of these, in legal services markets in particular. Everyone does it differently, but the tides on which we do it are the same. We’re independent, confidential and we’ll give you options to explore and challenge. It’s not charged by 15 minute time slots, hours or days: it’s included in a NED subscription.

 

The Mentor Service

Get all the confidential advice and alerts, and back it up with unlimited access to all the Dashboards and Due Diligence Profiles compiled by NED available all the time, anywhere on any device.

Dashboards and Due Diligence Profiles

When you need to remind yourself of the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘how much’ of what the competition are up to that you should worry about – start here.

Dashboards are definitive one page reminders of the Who, What and Where of key competitors. Due Diligence Profiles include 20 years of financials and projections to 2020 with commentaries on core product/market and financial positions. We dig out divisional results and make the necessary estimates for large or complicated groups. Market Maps show relative positions by client positioning and corporate finance long term achievements. This is the level of analysis done by all acquirers on prospects and markets they get serious about. We track hundreds of suppliers in many overlapping markets in legal and compliance services. Dashboards and DDPs are available for download from the web at any time.

Mentor Service

 

Your Very Own Non-Exec

Suppliers in the industry can opt to join our Non-Executive Director Service (NED) on a subscription basis and receive unlimited access to all of the above as well as all of the major Business Intelligence Reports we publish. All for one fixed fee pa.

Designed to be a virtual non-exec supporting the entrepreneurs and directors running businesses in these complex markets it’s confidential, insightful, and informed.

This service is not available to professional accountancy, strategy consultancy, banking or VC teams as their need is usually on a project basis only.

Market and Sector Business Intelligence

When you can’t see the wood for the trees, you need to see the big picture.

Our Business Intelligence Reports cover the long term performance of the market, its drivers, the costs of new entry, the leaders, how consolidated it is or is becoming, the power or lack of it for large players, the strength of innovators and firms buying in. M&A analyses track deals over the long term, show multiple ranges and the issues required for buyers and sellers alike. These are the big picture essential reports, used by everyone compiling commercial due diligence analyses when deciding to invest, exit, or simply upping their game. All the benchmarks per sector are there, and the leadership tables and market maps are unrivalled. There are ‘no green fields’ and these reports explain why.

Buiness Intelligence Buiness Intelligence Buiness Intelligence

M&A Hotspots, Players & Benchmarks

We not only publish the definitive Business intelligence on all the deals and benchmarks that have played out over the past decades, we track the deals that don’t happen as much as the headliners – so we’re the only non-commission led advisor on the real risks around M&A. We are buy-side specialists; we don’t sell companies; but we have written or dismembered every Information Memorandum on every deal in the markets we cover.

Deals from the legal services, legal and accounting technology services, document management and automation, safety, software, consulting and training markets are all examined and the real metrics for each are explained. We demystify the process and the benchmarks as we’ve been trade buyers, principals in deals from billions to tiny, and we’ve been the first people in to run the new teams too. We’ve run balanced portfolios exceeding targets for years, and we’ve pulled out of deals as well as concluded them. We’ve been VC ‘hunters’, entrepreneurial sellers and for many years we were ‘personal shoppers’ helping buyers find the most appropriate partners for their strategies. We leave the commissions and projects now to others, but we can help you manage the process: it’s what any decent non-exec would do – and it’s all part of the NED service.

 

Master Classes

An intensive explanation of the key issues facing all suppliers on the road to 2020. Pick 1, 2 or 3 sessions, we come to you, and for £500 you get the inside track on all the issues needed to make your plans and projects realistic and deliverable.

Sessions can cover:

Let us know your preferred dates and times (allow 2 hours), submit payment and we will email to arrange delivery as soon as possible. NED subscribers get a 10% on Masterclasses.

 

Coming Soon…

The Shortlist

Putting the best foot forward for the industry to it’s best prospects.

The Shortlist gets the best suppliers in compliance solutions in front of thousands of GCs, corporate counsel, in-house lawyers, HRDs and key decision makers in mid-market firms every year. NED helps buyers of compliance solutions find the suppliers best able to match their services to their needs. From RFPs and PQQs to ITTs, we help buyers simplify the shortlisting process so their choice of firms to invite to tender is speeded up, more accurate and more likely to generate the best fit.

This is not a beauty parade: this is due diligence.

Based on the work of our independent, authoritative and insightful research team we highlight suppliers in the following categories:

This service is provided free to GCs and HRDs with sponsorship opportunities for suppliers of legal and regulatory compliance services. For sponsorship opportunities please contact David.