PE Deal Screening

Give a fast, structured first read on whether a private-equity opportunity is worth pursuing, and frame the diligence that would confirm or kill it.

When to use

• Triaging inbound deal flow against the fund mandate.
• Preparing a screening memo for the deal team or IC.

Inputs

• The target: sector, size, geography, ownership, entry situation.
• The fund's mandate (cheque size, sectors, control vs. minority, return targets).
• Available financials and any thesis the seller/intermediary is presenting.

Steps

1. Check mandate fit: size, sector, geography, deal type — a hard gate.
2. Assess the business quality: market, moat, unit economics, management.
3. Sketch a value-creation thesis and a plausible return range.
4. Identify the two or three risks that could break the deal.
5. Turn each risk into a specific, answerable diligence question.

Output

A go/no-go recommendation with mandate-fit check, thesis sketch, key risks and a prioritised diligence question list. See also [[sector-taxonomy]] for consistent sector mapping.

Presenting results

• Present every result as one or more clear Markdown tables — one per section, each with a short heading.
• Keep prose minimal; put the substance in the tables.
• Offer the user a downloadable PDF (formatted) and CSV (the underlying rows), and generate them when asked.
• Never invent figures. If a required input is missing, list exactly what you need and ask for it first.