Dailly assignment

The Dailly assignment (cession Dailly) is a French legal mechanism enabling companies to assign or pledge trade receivables to a lending institution by delivering a simple bordereau form, without notifying the underlying debtors (unless notification is chosen for enforcement purposes). It is a common short-term financing tool for French SMEs, allowing immediate cash mobilisation against the receivables portfolio. In financial due diligence, the existence of a Dailly programme materially affects the working capital analysis: assigned receivables no longer appear on the balance sheet, causing the reported working capital to understate the true operational funding need.

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Example: a French SME has a CHF 2.5 million Dailly programme with its main bank. The assigned receivables do not appear on the balance sheet. During pre-acquisition due diligence, the true working capital — restated to include these receivables — is CHF 4.1 million versus CHF 1.6 million as reported, a CHF 2.5 million difference that directly impacts the completion accounts price adjustment mechanism.

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Hectelion systematically identifies and restates Dailly programmes in working capital normalisations for French acquisition targets.