A second-generation manufacturer, profitable and reputable, weighing a sale the family had not yet resolved upon. The usual course would have been to tidy the accounts and accept the discount a purchaser applies to reporting of that kind. We read it the other way round: the reporting was not the weakness but the place the value lay hidden. Margin, restated by product line, showed a business worth more than its owners believed; they went to market a year later knowing what they held.

A services platform ten weeks into its first institutional ownership, with a sound plan and a newly seated board. The customary answer to a plan slipping is more reporting. We did the opposite, and removed two of the three sets of figures in circulation, keeping the one the board and the operators could both read. The plan was revised twice in its first year, each time on evidence rather than instinct.

A research-led company nine months from a raise, trusted for its science and doubted for its accounts. Convention would have deferred the round until a finance function had been built. We held the date and looked instead at how the company was owned: the legal and financial ownership of its intellectual property was rearranged, which settled its tax position and made it eligible for funding it had been told was out of reach. The round closed well above the range the founder had thought realistic.