Public Evidence Charter

Why this charter exists

The Research section studies one long-running question: how companies are described, classified, and reinterpreted by the markets that receive them during cross-border events. Everything published here rests on materials that were public at the time and that any reader can locate and cite. That is a methodological choice rather than a limitation. The object of study is the company as its external audiences could see and reconstruct it at the moment in question. The public record is therefore the right evidence, and material those audiences could not see would misdescribe what they were reading.

The author of this research also runs a consulting practice that advises companies in cross-border moments. That raises an obvious question about where consulting knowledge ends and public research begins. This charter answers it in writing, so that the answer can be checked against each publication rather than assumed.

The charter binds every publication in the Research section: case studies, event briefs, Monitor reports, method notes, data appendices, and this document itself.

Terms used in this charter

Public material means a document or record that any member of the public could obtain at the time it is cited: securities filings and the correspondence files attached to them, exchange notices, press releases, published news and analyst commentary, court and regulatory records, and company web pages preserved with a date.

Written responses gathered with consent means answers given in writing by named individuals to a fixed set of questions, after they have been told how the answers will be used. These responses are not public material. Clause 11 governs them.

Client material means anything obtained through a consulting engagement or a conversation held in confidence: documents, interviews, meeting content, and unpublished data. Client material never enters this research.

The eleven commitments

1. Every research conclusion rests on public and citable material. A conclusion that cannot be traced to a source the reader could open is not published. Where a chain of reasoning depends on a fact, that fact carries its source next to it, not only in a list at the end.

2. No client files, internal interviews, meeting content, or unpublished data are used. This applies to the research as a whole and to each step within it: case selection, corpus construction, coding, analysis, and writing.

3. Client work is never rewritten as an anonymised case or a composite case. Consulting experience is not disguised and reused as research evidence. Where the practice has learned something from an engagement, that learning may shape which public questions are worth asking, but it does not appear as a case, an example, or an illustration in any publication.

4. The research corpus and client files are kept apart in storage and in workflow. Research materials live in their own repository, are gathered through their own process, and are never read alongside client files during production. The separation is operational, not only declaratory, so that a lapse would be visible in the working record.

5. Where a research subject touches a current client, a prospective client, a live transaction, or a conflict of interest, the publication discloses, excludes, or delays. A company that is a current client, or a party to a transaction on which the practice is advising, is excluded from the case set while that relationship stands. A company the practice has contacted to propose an engagement is treated as a prospective client and is not selected as a case until three months after the last exchange with it. Where publication is delayed until the relationship has ended, the delay is stated. Where a past relationship exists and the case is still published, the relationship is disclosed in the piece, and Clauses 8 and 9 apply with full force.

6. Every publication states its cutoff date and the types of source it used. A dated source line appears in each piece, listing the categories of material consulted: filings, exchange records, press coverage, regulatory correspondence, and, where used, written responses gathered with consent. Material appearing after the cutoff is not reflected in the piece and is not silently added later.

7. Appendices publish only source metadata, coding results, and text that may be redistributed. The case tables and coding appendices that accompany evidence-based publications are meant to be reused and cited. They contain the identity, date, and location of each source, the coded observations, and quotations kept to the length needed to show what was said. They do not reproduce copyrighted reporting in bulk.

8. Information learned in private is never used to selectively strengthen a public inference. The research does not lean on a public fragment because private knowledge suggests it is the important one, and does not omit a public fact because private knowledge suggests it is misleading. Each inference is one that a reader with the same public materials could reach.

9. Where public material and private client knowledge conflict, the public research states only the public record. If the practice knows privately that the public record is incomplete or wrong, the publication still describes what the record shows. It may state that the record leaves a question open. It does not resolve that question with what it knows in private.

10. Every research page keeps a corrections, withdrawal, and method-change mechanism. Each publication carries a dated entry point for corrections. Corrections of fact are logged in place with the date and the nature of the change. Changes of substance produce a new version number. A publication that can no longer stand is withdrawn with a notice that remains at its address. Changes to the method are versioned and recorded in the method documents, and each evidence-based publication names the method version it used.

11. The research may quote written responses that participants provide with informed consent. Quotations are attributed or anonymised as each participant chooses. Responses serve only as supplementary evidence from a practitioner’s perspective, and never as the sole basis for any public factual claim. The full text of responses is not published. The practice behind this clause is set out in the next section.

How Clause 11 works in practice

Participants are told in writing, before they answer, how their responses will be used and what they may choose. Each participant selects one of four levels: quotation with attribution, quotation with a role description only, inclusion in the aggregate summary without quotation, or no use at all. A participant who states no preference is placed in the aggregate summary without quotation. Every participant who answers receives the summary of what the group said. Any quotation intended for publication is returned to its author word for word for confirmation before it appears. Every participant who has answered in substance is given the draft to read before publication. Where responses are used, the source line records them as written responses gathered with consent, so that they are never mistaken for public material. A participant may withdraw a response at any point before publication, and a withdrawn response is removed from the summary and the piece.

How the charter appears in each publication

Four elements let a reader check a publication against this charter without reading the charter again.

The source line states the cutoff date and the types of source used, under Clause 6.

Limits sit beside the judgments they qualify. A limit that would change a reader’s conclusion is stated next to that judgment, where it narrows the claim or names the condition it depends on. Limits that apply to a whole evidence-based publication, such as reliance on a single case or what the observation window could not show, are gathered in a short note in its appendix. Throughout, the research follows its wording discipline: only public expressions, public restatements, and visible actions are reported; association is not written as causation; no claim is made about what any audience privately thought.

The appendix boundary, for evidence-based publications, is set by Clause 7.

The corrections entry, under Clause 10, records what has changed since first publication.

What this charter does not do

It does not claim that the public record is complete. Filings, correspondence, and coverage become public on their own timetables, and some never do. Each publication says what it could not see.

It does not vouch for the accuracy of the sources themselves. The research reports what the record says and where it says it, and notes where sources disagree.

It does not turn practitioner responses into evidence about what investors, regulators, or journalists thought. Responses gathered under Clause 11 are one professional’s account of their own experience, and they are presented as such.

It does not govern the consulting practice’s client work, which is governed by the terms of each engagement. The charter governs only what is published as research.

Corrections and method changes

Corrections to this charter follow Clause 10. A change of wording that does not alter a commitment is logged in place with its date. A change to any commitment produces a new version, and the earlier version remains available.

Version 1.0: first published version. Clause 11 has been part of the charter since its first text, adopted on 1 September 2026 before the first written exchange with practitioners took place. No responses have been gathered under any text lacking that clause.