The firm
A firm built for the years after the transaction.
Brunet Partners exists because the work that protects an investor is the work nobody is retained to do.
The frame
Who we are, formally.
Brunet Partners is a trading name of Neo Circle Limited, a company registered in Ireland under number 575116, authorised as a Trust or Company Service Provider by the Department of Justice and listed on the public TCSP register. Registered office: POD 2, The Old Station House, 15a Main Street, Blackrock, Dublin A94 T8P8.
That authorisation is what allows us to form and administer companies, to act in a company secretarial capacity and to maintain the structures we put in place. It also makes us a designated person under Irish anti-money-laundering legislation, with the client due diligence and record-keeping obligations that follow.
We state the authorisation rather than allude to it, because it is the boundary of what we may do — and because a firm that is vague about its own standing is unlikely to be precise about yours.
The boundary
What we are not.
We are not an investment fund, an asset manager or a financial intermediary. We do not hold or manage client money. We express no view on whether to acquire, retain or dispose of an investment, and we act only after that decision has been made by you.
This is not caution for its own sake. A firm that recommends an investment and then reports on it is grading its own work. Declining the first role is what makes the second one worth having.
Method
How we work.
We design before we instrument.
The starting point is the position — what you hold, what you can already compel, what remains discretionary — not the instrument. A Golden Share is one answer among several, and sometimes it is not the answer.
We coordinate counsel, we do not replace them.
Drafting is legal work and is carried out by a solicitor. We specify, coordinate and instruct, then implement and maintain what has been drafted. The distinction protects you as much as it protects us.
We state what is, not what we make of it.
Our reporting describes the position: capital structure, movements on the register, filings made, matters requiring attention. It does not appraise the company, and it expresses no opinion on the merits of your holding.
Conflicts
The mandates we decline.
Brunet Partners operates within a group whose other activities include accounting and company secretarial services. That proximity is useful — it is why the administration is done properly — and it creates an obvious question: who is the firm working for.
We answer it by rule rather than by assurance. We decline a mandate where the firm already acts as accountant to the target company, unless the conflict is disclosed in full, the client agrees in writing with that knowledge, and documented information barriers are in place.
The rule costs us mandates. It is the only version of independence that means anything.
The principal
Franck Brunet.
Franco-Irish, working between Ireland and continental Europe since 2008, advising companies and investors on formation, structuring and the compliance obligations that follow. Currently completing doctoral research on artificial intelligence applied to financial evaluation and performance.
Brunet Partners is one of four instruments he directs, alongside company formation, accounting and financial reporting activities. Each answers a different phase of the same problem: what a structure requires to be sound, to be kept, to be legible — and to hold.