What Is Due Diligence?
Due diligence is an investigation, audit, or review performed to confirm facts or details of a matter under consideration. In the financial world, due diligence requires an examination of financial records before entering into a proposed transaction with another party.
Key Takeaways
- Due diligence is a systematic way to analyze and mitigate risk from a business or investment decision.
- An individual investor can conduct due diligence on any stock using readily available public information.
- The same due diligence strategy will work on many other types of investments.
- Due diligence involves examining a company's numbers, comparing the numbers over time, and benchmarking them against competitors.
- Due diligence is applied in many other contexts, for example, conducting a background check on a potential employee or reading product reviews.