Legal and transaction services

Overview

We have supported the professional investment and legal communities over a wide variety of engagements internationally inclusive of commercial, operational, and technical due diligence, expert witness representation, team management, transactions modelling and reporting, synergies analyses, and strategic review.

As proven practitioners in these areas, we are widely familiar in working with levels of detail, robustness, integrity, privacy, and legal privilege that are expected from our clients. Underpinning this experience is our deep and broad knowledge of the telecommunications, online, media, and technology industries and adjacent sectors.

Somewhat uniquely, we are able to offer an integrated approach on due diligence assignments, meaning that our clients do not need to engage with one firm for commercials and another for technical analyses, ensuring agility and speed in time-critical deal environments.

Legal support

By definition, expert witness work calls for experts – an area where Plum excels. Our consulting model is based on a low leverage approach – meaning that our engagements with clients contain a high mix of senior staff time.

We are proven in working alongside the legal profession and we understand working practices and approaches required, which may include detailed reporting, dialogue, and court appearances.

We have supported legal clients in various cases requiring extensive industry experience in telecommunications and technology including disputes over network design and implementation, IT procurement and systems delivery, and R&D valuations.

Transactions support

Plum offers seamless and proven capability across commercial, technical, and operational due diligence areas and, as such, we are able to support clients in demanding deal environments not only with levels of integrity and analytical rigour that would be expected, but with improved levels of agility and efficiency, meaning that unnecessary risk in the deal is removed.

Commercial due diligence

As with most strategy and transactions engagements, effective and accurate modelling forms a bedrock for the engagement, coupled with commercial dialogue.

At Plum, we believe that useful modelling only results when sufficient industry experience is leveraged, ensuring that modelling approach, structure, and results are sense checked against industry trends, benchmarks, and a critical quality review.

In fact, the design of models, based on experience, is often critical, ensuring that materiality is properly thought through and that engagement time is well spent. Our international experience ensures that we are able to bring extensive data, client engagement, business models, and benchmark checks to deliver high quality, low risk results for clients.

Technical due diligence

In the telecommunications, online and wider digital industries, technology is often inextricably tied to deals, whether they be disposals, acquisitions or joint ventures. In the demanding environment of transactions, proven experience to CTO and CIO levels is essential, and is offered via Plum with many of our staff having either supported C-suite clients directly or taken interim roles at this level.

Engagement with Plum in technical due diligence engagements secures the proven and rare capability mix across client dialogue, technology strategy and alignment, architecture review, operational performance, vendor analyses, strategic vision, financial review, and critical reporting.

Operational due diligence

With our experience over numerous transformational programmes and industry deals, Plum has acquired a unique and deep capability in telecommunications benchmarking which is maintained via an in-house Plum database.

In our experience, successful deals and business transformation programmes align not only financial metrics over planned and delivered dimensions, but also set and attain key operational targets.

We are able to provide seamless support in transactions work across commercial, technical, and operational axes, mitigating risk and ensuring comprehensive review in key deal areas.

Latest Work

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Contact

Tony Lavender

Tony Lavender

tony.lavender@plumconsulting.co.uk
+44 7775 940 356

Tony Lavender is a Senior Advisor and former partner at Plum. He specialises in regulatory and policy issues across telecommunications and radio spectrum with a particular focus on the business and strategy implications of regulatory change. Tony has undertaken studies for government / regulator clients, operators and equipment vendors in many parts of the world. He has looked at many technical issues and their impact on regulation advising particularly in the area of next generation networks and network access and on the use of radio spectrum. Tony’s advice has been used by clients to further influencing work for changes in regulation – for example, agenda items on access to new frequency bands for mobile services at WRC23/27.

Tony is an expert at the application of analytical techniques to establish the impact of policy development or other changes across a wide range of stakeholders. He has assessed the economic benefit that would be delivered through the change of use or sharing of various frequency bands for mobile broadband services, most recently looking at the use of 3400-4200 MHz in London and Shenzhen; made recommendations for UK policy makers through the UK Spectrum Policy Forum on Licensed Shared Access (LSA); advised on the practical implementation of digital switchover; and examined competition and state aid issues for the deployment of fibre. Tony was also a member of the Expert Panel established by the UK Government to consider incorporation of social value into spectrum allocation decisions.

Tony is a chartered engineer and a member of the UK Institute of Engineering and Technology. He has a BSc in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of London.