Imagine acquiring your dream home, only to later discover that the property is encumbered in a judicial process. Similar situations can occur when companies seek to grow through acquisitions. Without thorough legal due diligence, the buyer may inherit significant liabilities, resulting in unexpected losses or even the nullification of the transaction.
Current technology, however, allows for a quick gathering of legal and tax certificates, identifying liabilities and debts, and warning about potential risks, mitigating distrust and lack of transparency at an affordable cost. This is exactly what PortData does, a branch of Port Louis specialized in automating legal audits, which closed the first quarter of 2024 with a 25% growth in revenue compared to the same period last year. “Our main goal is to enable transparency in transactions, bringing clear benefits to all parties involved, contributing to productivity and wealth generation in our country,” says Renata Soares, co-founder of Port Louis.
In the first half of this year, the platform conducted around 8,000 searches by CNPJ and CPF. Using its Due Diligence 5.0 technology, PortData employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate tasks that were previously manual and repetitive, such as gathering certificates from various legal entities in the country. Additionally, the platform centralizes, organizes, and provides analytical insights on the content of these documents, categorizing and identifying risk factors with different severity levels to support users’ legal assessment.
“Through PortData, our clients can obtain more than three thousand different certificates from various issuers throughout Brazil. These certificates cover fiscal, civil, labor, criminal, bankruptcy, and concordat matters, often revealing an extensive list of existing processes. We make the task of identifying legal liabilities faster and more accurate, which can impact the value of a transaction or even make it unfeasible,” explains Renata.
Due to Brazil’s highly capillary judicial and fiscal structure, the first challenge is to gather certificates from various agents, each with its system, unique input demands, and different return deadlines. A Due Diligence process, therefore, cannot be rushed and requires careful document management, especially when there are multiple annotations. “The time spent in an analog process is exhausting because it requires the individual to request certificates from various issuers, repeatedly entering the same or different data, which increases the chance of error,” emphasizes Renata.
This type of assessment is crucial for any significant asset transaction, whether for an individual or a legal entity. “Before taking any steps, even if the operation is not that large, it is necessary to make sure that there are no liabilities that could render it unfeasible,” concludes Renata.
