No. 01 — The firm
Built small on purpose, and kept that way.
Diligo Partners was founded in 2011 by three bankers who had spent a decade watching founder-led companies get handed to associates the week after the mandate was signed.
No. 02 — The model
We do not take retainers on businesses we would not buy ourselves, we do not run auctions to generate a comparable, and we do not staff a mandate with anyone who was not in the first meeting. Roughly two in five approaches end in a recommendation to wait — which is the advice a bank paid on completion can never give.
No. 03 — The partners
Diligo staffs deal teams senior-first — the partner who pitches the mandate is the one who closes it.
DILIGO•PARTNERS•
No. 04 — Fifteen years
Five moments that changed how the firm works. Everything between them was a mandate.
Three desks in Clerkenwell
Reyes, Whitfield and Marsh leave a bulge-bracket industrials team and take one mandate with them.
2011
The first cross-border close
A Yorkshire toolmaker sold to a Bavarian group, and the reason the Munich desk exists at all.
2014
The ceiling goes in
Six live mandates becomes a written rule after a year in which two founders got a director instead of a partner.
2018
Special situations as a practice
Restructuring work stops being a favour to old clients and becomes a third of the sheet.
2021
$6.4B advised
One hundred and forty-eight closings across eleven jurisdictions, and the same three names on every engagement letter.
2026
No. 05 — Standards
The name on the first call is the name on the completion statement. No handover, no coverage rota, no exceptions since 2018.
If the honest answer is wait eighteen months, that is the answer — even when the fee is sitting on the table.
No tombstones without written consent, no case studies with the name changed, no dinner-party anecdotes. Most of the sheet you will never see.
No. 06 — Next step
Tell us which of the three sits closest to your situation and we will put the call in the diary this week.