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Private Finance, acquisitions and mergers

As well as producing reports on the value for money of various Private Finance activities, the NAO disseminates good practice through its events, including the annual Private Finance conference, workshops and regular meetings with stakeholders.

In examining several joint ventures, acquisitions and mergers in the public sector in recent years, the NAO has drawn out wider lessons from these individual cases which could benefit other public sector organisations. Useful resources are listed below.

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Guidance on this topic

A selection of our publications providing help and advice on this topic:

A Framework for evaluating the implementation of Private Finance Initiative projects

This current best practice model sets out six functions used to manage complex capital investment programmes, the tasks associated with each, what good looks like, and case studies of how Departments are currently implementing them.

Full Report

Private Finance Recommendations Database

Reports produced by the House of Commons' Committee of Public Accounts (the PAC) following hearings based on our PFI and PPP investigations include nearly 1000 recommendations.

We have collected these recommendations and the related Treasury responses into a PFI and PPP/Privatisation Recommendations database last updated: 19/06/2009.

Managing complex capital investment programmes utilising private finance

We have published this model to provide guidance to Departments on HMT’s and NAO’s expectations of how they should manage their programmes involving PPP and PFI projects.

Full report

Good Practice Briefing for PFI/PPP

April 2006

This is a special edition of NAO's Focus series giving an overview of key themes from PFI/PPP studies and an update on our current work. It also highlights recommendations and good practice in this area.

Good Practice Briefing for PFI/PPP (PDF - 667KB)

Wider lessons for public sector mergers of regulatory authorities

July 2006

Good practice section (extracted from NAO report The creation of Ofcom: Wider lessons for public sector mergers of regulatory agencies (HC 1175, 2005-06, July 2006)):

Wider lessons for public sector mergers of regulatory authorities (PDF - 143KB)

Making joint ventures work

May 2001

A good practice guide taken from Focus magazine, issue 10 (PDF - 797KB) aimed to encourage departments and Agencies to exploit their skills and assets commercially through the Wider Markets Initiative which is aimed at improving the management of public sector assets.

Making joint ventures work (PDF - 121KB)

Monitoring investments with the private sector

November 2000

A piece of guidance taken from Focus magazine, issue 9 which summarises the DTI’s approach to overseeing the Post Office’s acquisition of German Parcel in January 1999.

Key success factors when entering into partnerships

December 2000

This piece of guidance demonstrating the lessons learnt by the Radiocommunication Agency is taken from pages 8-9 of the NAO report, The Radiocommunication Agency's joint venture with CMG (HC 21, December 2000)

Key success factors when entering into partnerships (PDF - 113KB)