Several years of financial statements and tax filings, the owner's compensation arrangements, customer concentration information, and the full transaction documents including all security arrangements.
Due diligence and the immigration file are the same request
The material a careful buyer wants and the material the immigration file needs overlap almost completely, so asking once serves both. Financial statements and tax filings support substantiality and address marginality. Owner compensation shows what the business really produces for a proprietor. Customer concentration indicates what might leave with the seller. Transaction documents, including escrow and security arrangements, establish whether funds are committed and at risk. Requesting all of it during due diligence is normal and expected, whereas requesting it after closing is awkward and sometimes futile. A Douro-Dummer buyer should also retain their own copies of everything received, since access to the seller's records may not survive the transaction.
Projections carry weight when something outside the applicant's own spreadsheet supports them: booked contracts, deposits already taken, the previous owner's filed accounts and bank statements, supplier and lease commitments, and industry data for comparable operations. Payroll registers by period with total hours, the service contracts for each building, annual financial statements prepared consistently, the current share register, and evidence of the investors' own role in running the enterprise.