The one where the answer was no

A broker sent us a family group: a holding company, a property company, a trading entity and two trusts, with loans running in every direction. Nobody, including the family, had seen the whole position in one place.

Our model consolidated the lot, starting with a family tree of the ownership, the intra-group flows eliminated, and the true group position laid out on one page. Revenue was growing fast. But the group was loss-making in every period, carried negative net assets, and was being kept afloat by family loans.

No servicing was evident, and we said so. The broker had the verdict within days, in a document they could put in front of the client: not a maybe, a clear no, with the exact changes needed before the deal could ever get over the line. No lodgement burned, no weeks lost, no lender relationship spent on a file that could not pass.

The fee was the same as if the answer had been yes. That is the point.