01 / Notes
Short papers, argued the way we advise.
We publish rarely and only when we have something we'd stake a mandate on. No thought-leadership — arguments, with the working shown.
4
Notes a year, on average — because a note should cost us something. 1
02 / The index
Every note we've let out.
03 / 2026 · 02 · Note 04
What a number owes you
A board paper is a stack of numbers asking to be trusted. Most of them arrive without a receipt — a growth rate with no denominator, a synergy with no source, a multiple lifted from a comparable no one names. The figure looks precise, so the room treats it as true.
We hold to a plainer rule: every figure carries the basis it was built on, stated in the same breath. Not a footnote nobody reads — a sentence a director can check. It slows the paper down by a line and speeds the decision up by a meeting.
1 in 5
Figures in a typical diligence pack that we could not trace to a stated source on first read. 2
The discipline is not pedantry; it is how you keep a number honest under pressure. When the counter-party's counsel asks where £840m came from, the answer is either a sentence or a silence — and silence is what reopens a completed deal.
A figure you can't source is an opinion wearing a decimal point. Eleanor Halden, Founder
So we publish our own figures the way we'd want to receive a client's: small, checkable, and followed by their basis. If that makes the record less impressive, it makes it more useful — and a boutique advisory trades on being useful, not impressive.
Basis of figures
- 1Notes published per calendar year, 2021–2025; the firm's own count.
- 2Untraceable figures as a share of quantitative claims, across diligence packs reviewed in 2025; illustrative, not audited.
04 / The notes list
Four papers a year, no more.
If that's a pace you can live with, leave an address. We don't share it, and we don't fill the gaps with newsletters.
0
Times we've sold or shared a subscriber address. It stays at zero. 1