Access to markets

Attacks on reputation can critically damage even the most mutually beneficial transactions. We work with ambitious businesses take down the barriers to getting deals done.

Commercially sound transactions can be frustrated by invisible barriers. Deals that work on their merits can fail to progress, not because they are refused or because a regulatory decision halts them, but because they become a proxy for a different kind of argument.

Ambitious plans - often in fields like infrastructure or clean energy that are desperately needed - can stall once other interests begin to attach to the transaction. Nothing in the underlying deal has changed, but the basis on which it is being considered has.

Following the process in these circumstances leads to frustration. The process continues, but the outcome is no longer being determined on merit. Criteria are applied that are not articulated, and which cannot be addressed directly, leaving the transaction inexplicably constrained from the outset.

Our approach

By the time a transaction becomes public, it is often too late to influence the position in a meaningful way. These situations require a clear understanding of who will determine the outcome, what will matter to them, and how that position is formed before it is expressed. Access is rarely refused outright, and there is often no formal decision capable of challenge. 

We act for entrepreneurs, family offices and advisers to businesses facing this kind of constraint, including where access is affected by how a transaction is perceived, the associations attributed to those involved, or concerns that extend beyond the deal itself. This includes situations where access is restricted on the basis of factors that are not openly stated, and which may reflect little more than perceived origin, alignment or association.

The point at which these matters are addressed determines the outcome. Left until they are visible, they are usually fixed.