DNV LONDON: DNV has now recruited a complete Corporate Services team. The new team will enhance DNV’s ability to serve this expanding market, as companies and investments are increasingly exposed to external scrutiny.

The acquired team is one of the UK market leaders in the provision of Corporate Responsibility (CR) and Environmental Due Diligence (EDD) services, and will therefore enhance DNV’s Corporate Services portfolio in these areas.

"The consultants joining DNV in London are leaders in their area and they complement our existing services. Our clients will benefit from the ability of DNV to support them in this growing area," says Chief Operating Officer of DNV Consulting, Iain Light.

In conjunction with DNV’s existing consultancy services, there is now a team in London providing comprehensive Corporate support to organisations in the UK and, via DNV’s international network of offices, worldwide.

The new team members, including Nick Biagetti, Simon Day, Andreas King and Hayden Morgan, were all previously working together as a leading group in the UK providing Corporate Services to clients. Their capabilities include:

• Environmental Due Diligence services including transaction support, liability assessment, compliance auditing, risk assessment, risk management and portfolio reviews
• Corporate Responsibility capabilities including; stakeholder engagement, baseline reviews, benchmarking, policy/objectives/key performance indicators, strategic action planning, corporate reporting/external verification and corporate environmental management systems implementation

Corporate Responsibility
Corporate Responsibility encompasses the way in which a company gains business benefit through addressing its social, environmental and ethical risks at the corporate level. The key factors for purchasing these services are that they generate business benefit, maintain shareholder value and protect against external scrutiny.

Environmental Due Diligence systematically identifies and assesses environmental risks that may be ‘material’ to a transaction. Such services are commissioned by private equity investors, purchasers and lenders prior to investments in target companies. However, vendors are also increasingly commissioning due diligence services to facilitate the sale process. Due Diligence is increasingly used to determine broader business performance implications of environmental issues both during the transaction and on an ongoing basis. It is increasingly being linked with the provision of CR services to enable companies to identify, manage and mitigate their non-financial risks.

The main application of these Due Diligence services is to determine all business performance implications, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, corporate liability and compliance, and brand issues. It is anticipated that the demand for this service will significantly increase as M&A transaction activity increases.