What institutional diligence actually examines

Diligence starts with ownership: who owns what, documented, reconciled, with the approvals that created each holding. Undocumented equity and missing board approvals are the most common findings, and the hardest to fix under time pressure.

Financial records need to be consistent enough that a model can reconcile to them. A model that contradicts the accounts damages credibility faster than a missing model does.

Metric definitions matter for the same reason: definitions that changed silently over time read as a red flag.

Fix ownership and approvals, then records, then the model, then the materials. Running that in the opposite order produces a polished deck sitting on top of findings that will surface anyway.