PE Firm Vetting Report

Overview

A PE Firm Vetting Report is a paginated, twelve-section due-diligence document on a private equity general partner being evaluated by a Limited Partner for a fund-vintage commitment. It is generated on demand from SEC EDGAR Form ADV and Form D filings, ILPA published GP standards, public LP commitment news (CalPERS, CalSTRS, Yale, MIT, Texas TRS investment-committee minutes), and reputable financial-press search via Serper. It takes three to five minutes to produce, costs 50 credits (about $20 USD), and is delivered as a shareable HTML report with a printable PDF view.

It is intended for a pension fund, university endowment, sovereign wealth fund, family office, fund-of-funds, or qualified-purchaser high-net-worth backer evaluating a $10M-$500M commitment to a PE firm's next vintage.

The Six Frameworks We Adopt

ICD 203 — Analytic Standards (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Directive 203 defines nine tradecraft standards for analytic products: properly describing quality and credibility of sources, properly expressing and explaining uncertainties, distinguishing assumptions from judgments, incorporating analysis of alternatives, demonstrating customer relevance and addressing implications, using clear and logical argumentation, explaining change to or consistency of analytic judgments, making accurate judgments and assessments, and incorporating effective visual information where appropriate. We treat these as binding for every PE Firm Vetting Report.

ICD 206 — Sourcing Requirements (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

ICD 206 requires that every analytic product disseminated by the U.S. Intelligence Community classify each source by source class. Section 12 of every PE Firm Vetting Report aggregates every URL cited above and classifies each by source class (Primary / Authoritative Secondary / Tier-1 Press / Trade Press / Other) so the LP Due Diligence team can see the source-class distribution at a glance.

UK PHIA Probability Yardstick (UK Defence Intelligence)

Every probabilistic claim — GP track-record consistency, vintage performance inference, key-person risk, governance-integrity assessment — is expressed using the seven-band PHIA yardstick (remote chance / highly unlikely / unlikely / realistic possibility / likely / highly likely / almost certain) paired with an analytical-confidence rating (Low / Moderate / High).

ILPA GP/LP Best Practices (Institutional Limited Partners Association)

The ILPA Principles 3.0 and the ILPA Reporting Template define the LP-side standard for evaluating GP governance, fee transparency, key-person provisions, LPAC composition, and fund-level reporting. Section 9 (Fee Structure & LPA Terms) and Section 10 (Governance Disclosures & SEC Form ADV) explicitly map their evaluation criteria to ILPA-aligned signals where the firm has publicly disclosed comparable terms.

Counterparty Due Diligence Framework (MentionFox)

Section 3 (Firm History & Strategy Evolution) and Section 4 (Principal Team Roster & Key-Person Risk) apply the Counterparty Due Diligence framework that anchors the Counterparty Vetting Report (vertical 10): legal name, jurisdiction of incorporation (Delaware LP/LLC standard for U.S. PE firms), registered address, prior name changes, regulatory enforcement history, related-party transactions disclosed in fund documents.

AML/KYC + SEC Form ADV Compliance Framework

Section 10 (Governance Disclosures) cross-references SEC EDGAR Form ADV Items 11.A-11.J (disciplinary history) and SEC litigation releases for any enforcement actions naming the firm, its named partners, or affiliated entities. Where the firm operates as a Registered Investment Adviser, we cite the firm's Form ADV directly. Anti-money-laundering / know-your-customer hygiene at the GP level is surfaced where Form ADV discloses custody arrangements, qualified-custodian relationships, and conflicts-of-interest disclosures.

The Twelve Sections of a PE Firm Vetting Report

Scoring Methodology

The PE Firm LP-Suitability Score is a 0-100 composite of four equally-weighted sub-scores:

1. GP track record (0-25) — depth of named investment professionals, prior firm pedigree, partner tenure, key-person continuity. Higher score = deeper, more experienced, more durable team.
2. Fund-vintage performance (0-25) — DPI / TVPI / MOIC where publicly disclosed; cohort-level outcomes. Higher score = consistent quartile-leading or better returns across vintages. Where vintage performance is not public, the sub-score is calibrated against firm reputation + observable proxies (subsequent fund-raise speed and size).
3. Strategy clarity (0-25) — coherent, articulated strategy vs strategy drift across vintages; sector and geography focus discipline. Higher score = clear thesis, consistent execution.
4. Governance integrity (0-25) — Form ADV cleanliness, ILPA-aligned LPA terms where disclosed, transparent fee structure, no SEC enforcement actions. Higher score = better governance hygiene. Lower governance-integrity sub-score = higher LP risk; this direction is spelled out explicitly in every report.

Headline recommendation is one of: commit / commit with diligence / additional research / pass. The choice is anchored in the composite score and red-flag aggregation, not in cohort-following or marketing tone.

Data Sources — Free Public Only

• SEC EDGAR Form ADV — every U.S. RIA / ERA discloses Items 11.A-11.J (disciplinary history), Schedule A (named investment professionals), and custody arrangements. Free + immediate.
• SEC EDGAR Form D filings — every U.S. Reg D private-fund offering. Discloses fund name, offering size, named selling commission recipients, Form ADV linkage. Free.
• Public LP investment-committee minutes — CalPERS, CalSTRS, NY State Common, Texas TRS, Florida SBA, Washington State Investment Board, Yale endowment annual reports, MIT endowment annual reports, Notre Dame, Princeton (where disclosed). Public board materials regularly disclose fund-level commitments + occasional fee terms.
• Reputable financial press — Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Pensions & Investments, Private Equity International (free articles), Institutional Investor, Forbes, Fortune.
• SEC enforcement actions database — for any prior enforcement against named officers, the firm entity, or affiliated entities.
• Serper — for general press / news search across the above sources.

What we do NOT use: PitchBook full subscription data, Preqin full subscription data, Cambridge Associates Benchmarks, Bison data, Bloomberg Terminal LP due diligence modules, or any subscription-gated LP database.

Honest Limits — what we do not do

Corrections Policy

Three commitments modeled on the BBC editorial corrections process:

1. Identification window. Errors flagged within thirty days of report generation are corrected on the canonical view URL within five business days.
2. Re-publication, not silent edit. Corrections preserve a redline diff between the original and corrected text, time-stamped, with a one-line explanation.
3. Subject right of reply. The firm named in any Vetting Report may submit a one-paragraph factual rebuttal to corrections@mentionfox.com. Verifiable rebuttals attach to the report alongside the original section.

Data integrity floor — ALCOA. Every PE Firm Vetting Report carries an ALCOA Methodology footer (Attributable / Legible / Contemporaneously / Original / Accurately) — the FDA's data-integrity framework, applied to LP due diligence analytic products.