The very first thing astute investors look for in a deal is not the product, production, promotion or profit projections – it is the people in the team. It is the sum total of the peoples’ complementary expertise, experience, extensive network and their combined exhilarating emotional energy that makes a company achieve miracles – T.E.A.M. Together Everyone Achieves Miracles.

If you read the success stories of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Tesla and the like, you will come to a conclusion on the importance of having a business leader that can galvanise the troops in the relentless pursuit of their purpose.

Issuers need to define and articulate clearly the vision, mission, objectives, strategies and tactics of the business. Some issuers are so blatant stating their purpose of their enterprise is to make a profit which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Today, investors are more concerned about impactful investing – investments that can help to bring prosperity and peace to people and the planet. Many are looking at the investee companies’ goals to be in line with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The issuers need to show investors that the majority of the board of directors are independent directors (those who do not own shares in the company and are guardians of the company and an objective representative of shareholders). A board with best-in-breed corporate governance standards would have 3 independent directors of which one of them is chair, in addition to one executive director cum CEO and another non-executive director.

To ensure continuity of business and smooth succession should something untoward happen to the CEO, the firm must have a CFO (chief financial officer) and COO (chief operating officer/general manager) to be able to deputise the CEO anytime to run the business like nothing had happened. The investor needs to be convinced that the background of the CTO (chief technical officer/chief engineer), CMO (chief marketing officer/sales director), CPO (chief procurement/logistic/supply chain officer), CAO (chief admin, talent & training officer) and CIR (chief investor-relations officer) can work together as a team to execute the plans to achieve the forecasted profits. 

Do not just state the peoples’ paper qualifications and past employment history. State their involvement in business-related matters and better still their success in their previous ventures or family business or school business initiatives. Anything but to show the team are really entrepreneurs and not nerds in some self-fulfilling journey.  

Finally, investors will do their due diligence search on the integrity of the team members, especially controlling shareholders. Warren Buffett warns us to choose integrity over intelligence. Firms run by people without integrity will surely run it down.