Forensic Accounting and Litigation Services

An Expert Witness can be anyone with knowledge or experience of a particular field or discipline whose duty is to give the Court an impartial opinion on particular aspects of matters within their expertise which are in dispute.

At Azets, our Litigation Support and Expert Witness Services focus on providing forensic assistance and expert testimony in commercial disputes, whether existing or pending. We will work closely with your existing legal advisers to provide you with the support required at all stages of the litigation.

Litigation support can be a service provided in conjunction with our fraud investigation or forensic technology services but also deals with issues relating to liability in negligence cases and other cases that require the quantification of economic damages.

A typical litigation support assignment strengthens a plaintiff’s case for the recovery of economic loss or fortifies a defendant’s resistance to litigation. Our services include:

• Pre-Trial support including expert reporting and discovery;
• Trial Support including analysing testimony from the other side and acting as expert witness;
• Settlement support include quantification, plus structuring settlements in the most tax efficient manner possible.

At Azets having acted in hundreds of various formal appointments in examinerships, liquidations and receiverships, we have carried out a large number of investigations across a wide range of sectors and services.

We report regularly to the High Court as part of our formal appointments with carrying out statutory reports to the ODCE and reports to the board and shareholders of companies. The types of unlawful activities include:

• Fraudulent financial;
• Misappropriation of assets;
• Computer crime / abuse of IT phishing;
• Revenue gained by fraudulent or illegal acts;
• Activity that leads to shareholder or partner disputes;
• Expenses avoided by fraudulent or illegal acts;
• Insurance fraud;
• Tax frauds.

Dispute Advisory Services can include both formal and informal assignments to assist in commercial dispute resolution, often involving disputes of significant scale.

These can include resolving deadlock at board level, patent infringement disputes, loss of profits claims, consequential loss and warranty claims. Resolution of disputes in the most tax efficient manner possible is a core skillset of Azets.

In entrepreneurial, owner managed or family-owned businesses, shareholder or partner disputes often arise. The emotional issues can cloud what should otherwise be a straightforward commercial resolution, particularly in family disputes.

We understand the importance of both the emotional and commercial issues in reaching a resolution to a dispute.

Loss of Earnings Calculations

Arising out of a dispute, there may be a requirement to calculate the loss to form part of the legal submissions of any litigation, whether the litigation is personal relating to a loss of income or commercial and relating to a loss of profits.

We have a wide range of expertise across a number of services and industries allowing us to draw on this expertise when calculating the loss suffered by you or your client. In more recent times, business interruption claims have formed a key part of loss of earnings calculations.

Our approach to calculating the loss of earnings is:

• Information gathering – gather relevant financial information relating to prior to and after the event that caused the loss;
• Calculation – calculate the loss of earnings resulting from the event that would put you back on the same financial footing but for the event;
• Projections – project forward future earnings which would have been earned but for the event that caused the loss;
• Mitigation – take into account any mitigation of losses which have occurred;
• Report – prepare a loss of earnings report that will form part of your submission.

Corporate Intelligence is the process of obtaining information from a range of trusted sources to assist clients to better understand the nature of actual or prospective business partners, suppliers, customers or employees.

Asset Tracing is a procedure to identify property in the ownership of the target or that has been taken from the claimant involuntarily.

It is not in itself a way to recover the property, but rather to identify it so that the client (or indeed the Court) can decide what steps to take or remedies to apply.

We offer a thorough and comprehensive report about an individual and their asset holdings through a variety of resources, including online searches, company search analysis, directorships, social media, licensing, land registries, aviation registries and news items. Finally, we utilise alternative sources up to and including private investigator reports and the use of extra-jurisdictional partners where required.