Investments boost economic growth but destroy value
Investment into companies is a fundamental driver of economic growth and competitiveness, helping to foster innovation and improve productivity, however research shows that 60% of M&A deals actually destroy value. The global M&A market is valued at ~€4 trillion, meaning ~€2.4 trillion is wasted. This is despite the average M&A deal taking 6-months, €500k-€1 million spent on commercial due diligence costs
Poor data quality and unscientific analysis in due diligence
This can be attributed to poor quality data and unscientific analysis in due diligence, with analysts unable to accurately assess market risks and opportunities, resulting in overestimated deal synergies and valuations. Financial analysis is hampered by the need to analyse and extract information from multiple, hard to parse, heterogeneous data sources (company websites, research reports, financial statements, social media, etc.), which requires human analysts to sift through thousands of documents and manually crunch numbers.
The process is time and cost intensive (a, and unable to scale given exponentially increasing amounts of web data. Existing solutions (offshore consultancies, financial data providers) are not scalable as they rely on humans and basic technology for data collection.
EU Impact - Fraud prevention/detecting systemic risk: The EC has a strict anti-fraud policy and has tasked OLAF with implementing it. Between 2010 and 2017, OLAF has concluded over 1,800 investigations, recommended the recovery of over €6.6 billion to the EU budget and issued over 2,300 recommendations for judicial, financial, disciplinary and administrative action to be taken by the competent authorities of the Member States and the EU. The Plural AI engine could contribute to a substantial reduction in this figure by detecting abnormalities and unusual activity.
We completed a technological roadmap, customer validation, pricing model assessment, risk assessment, IP assessment and updated our Business plan.
