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A company preparing a cross-border financing or listing is about to be read by investors, regulators and financial media it has never met. That reading forms early. When it differs from management’s own account, the difference does not arrive labelled as a question of identity. It arrives as a valuation question, a diligence finding or an approval delay.
Bankers, lawyers, investor relations and communications advisers are each engaged for a defined part of the transaction. What matters is whether anyone has been engaged for the whole: how the company is being read across the audiences that decide the outcome, and whether the account management has chosen withstands that reading. Where no one has, Cross-Border Identity Architecture is engaged to make that judgement, test it against the evidence and turn it into a narrative architecture that management and its advisers can use in their respective work. The fee is agreed before work begins and does not change with the transaction’s outcome.
The two engagements at a glance
| Dimension | Diagnostic Sprint | Transaction Narrative Architecture |
|---|---|---|
| In a financing | Before the financing takes shape: a first international fundraise, the run-up to listing preparation, or the period after a change of ownership. | Inside an active financing window that the market already knows about, where the outcome moves the deal. |
| Audiences | One priority audience and one defined question about how it reads the company. | Several audiences with different expectations evaluating the company at the same time. |
| Duration | Typically 6 to 10 weeks. | Typically 2 to 4 months, driven by the project timetable. |
| Participation | The executive responsible for the decision joins two meetings of up to 90 minutes each, at the start and after written delivery. The people who wrote or approved the current external story also contribute. Youxi Huang conducts the analysis, writes the deliverables and sends a one-page progress note each week. | Three decision points selected at kickoff, each with advance reading material, live participation by Youxi Huang and a written note. Between them, exchanges are in writing, with questions flagged as critical to a decision point answered within the same business day. Agreed lines for identified trigger events are drafted with the Deployment Strategy. No other active transaction is taken on during the agreed window. |
| What the client receives | Identity Diagnostic Report, Narrative Architecture Design, Deployment Strategy and Key Audience Perception Mapping. Alongside these four deliverables, an Advisor Reference for the client's advisers to use in their own work, and one written review of the company's revised documents against the architecture. | Everything in the Sprint, extended across the window, plus a Multi-Audience Narrative Matrix, an Advisor Narrative Interface and a Management and Board Narrative Alignment Memorandum. |
Diagnostic Sprint brief Transaction Narrative Architecture brief Not sure which: write to the practice
Start from the decision
What we do
Cross-border financing and listing are the practice’s main focus. Management may know why the company is worth backing without having made the reasoning clear to an outside reader. We compare that reasoning with how investors and regulators are likely to read the company, and test what the evidence supports. The judgement becomes a narrative architecture: one account that banks, lawyers, IR and communications teams can use in their own workstreams. Each keeps ownership of its own work.
Acquisitions and overseas growth are also within scope for the memo and both engagements. Each is shaped around the client’s particular decision.
Diagnostic Sprint concentrates on one question and one priority audience. Transaction Narrative Architecture follows the work across an active transaction window, when several audiences are evaluating the company at once and narrative decisions need to be made at agreed points.
Diagnostic Sprint
For a company with one defined question about how a priority audience understands it, ahead of a consequential cross-border decision. Typically 6 to 10 weeks, ending in four deliverables: an Identity Diagnostic Report, a Narrative Architecture Design, a Deployment Strategy and a Key Audience Perception Mapping. Alongside these, the client receives a two-to-three-page Advisor Reference for its banks, lawyers and investor relations advisers to consult in their own work, and one written review of the company’s revised key documents against the architecture.
Diagnostic Sprint
For a company with one defined question about how a priority audience understands it, ahead of a consequential cross-border decision. Typically 6 to 10 weeks, ending in four deliverables: an Identity Diagnostic Report, a Narrative Architecture Design, a Deployment Strategy and a Key Audience Perception Mapping. Alongside these, the client receives a two-to-three-page Advisor Reference for its banks, lawyers and investor relations advisers to consult in their own work, and one written review of the company’s revised key documents against the architecture.
The Sprint fits the moments before the transaction takes shape: a first international fundraise before investor perception has settled, the company’s account of itself ahead of listing preparation, or the period after a change of ownership, before the financing that follows. The Diagnostic Sprint brief sets out the work in full.
Transaction Narrative Architecture
For a company being evaluated by several audiences at once, with narrative advice needed against a live transaction timetable. Typically 2 to 4 months, driven by that timetable. At kickoff, three decision points are selected. The Deployment Strategy identifies the trigger events, and agreed lines for them are drafted alongside it. Youxi Huang takes part directly at each point. Between them, exchanges are in writing, with questions flagged as critical to a decision point answered within the same business day. The practice takes on no other active transaction during the agreed window.
Transaction Narrative Architecture
For a company being evaluated by several audiences at once, with narrative advice needed against a live transaction timetable. Typically 2 to 4 months, driven by that timetable. At kickoff, three decision points are selected. The Deployment Strategy identifies the trigger events, and agreed lines for them are drafted alongside it. Youxi Huang takes part directly at each point. Between them, exchanges are in writing, with questions flagged as critical to a decision point answered within the same business day. The practice takes on no other active transaction during the agreed window.
It includes everything in the Diagnostic Sprint, extended across the window, plus a Multi-Audience Narrative Matrix, an Advisor Narrative Interface for the teams around the table, and a Management and Board Narrative Alignment Memorandum. Each decision point includes advance reading material and a written note on its narrative implications. The engagement is confirmed after a first exchange about the situation, its timetable and audiences; where the situation calls for the smaller engagement, that is what we recommend instead. The Transaction Narrative Architecture brief explains when that level of involvement earns its place.
A standalone product: the Cross-Border Perception Memo
Not every situation calls for an engagement. For a company that first wants an outside view of its public-facing materials, within a fixed scope, the practice offers one standalone product. The Cross-Border Perception Memo identifies, one by one, the main perception frictions in how key overseas audiences are likely to read those materials; in its complete form it also gives a surface-level resolution direction for each. It draws on public information only, runs entirely in writing, and is delivered within ten working days after full payment. The fixed fee is $10,000 for the analysis with resolution directions, or $3,000 for the analysis alone; the resolution directions can be added afterwards for a further $7,000, paid within one month after delivery of the analysis.
A standalone product: the Cross-Border Perception Memo
Not every situation calls for an engagement. For a company that first wants an outside view of its public-facing materials, within a fixed scope, the practice offers one standalone product. The Cross-Border Perception Memo identifies, one by one, the main perception frictions in how key overseas audiences are likely to read those materials; in its complete form it also gives a surface-level resolution direction for each. It draws on public information only, runs entirely in writing, and is delivered within ten working days after full payment. The fixed fee is $10,000 for the analysis with resolution directions, or $3,000 for the analysis alone; the resolution directions can be added afterwards for a further $7,000, paid within one month after delivery of the analysis.
The memo deliberately stays at the surface of the materials. Where a friction points to something deeper in how the company accounts for itself, either form marks the deeper point in one line without developing it; that deeper work is what the two engagements above are for. If the company signs either engagement within one month after the memo’s most recent delivery, the full amount paid for the memo is credited against it. The memo brief sets out the product in full.
Who does the work
Youxi Huang conducts the analysis, leads the key discussions and writes every deliverable. There are no junior teams and no handoffs, and the practice takes a limited number of engagements at a time.
The method
NPA (Narrative Power Analysis) is the method behind the judgement. It examines who controls interpretation and where legitimacy gaps form, then follows those gaps into the institutional decisions they eventually reach. In practice, it sets the company’s own materials against what each audience assumes and has already seen in comparable cases. What the audience worries about now is usually where the gap surfaces first.
The method
NPA (Narrative Power Analysis) is the method behind the judgement. It examines who controls interpretation and where legitimacy gaps form, then follows those gaps into the institutional decisions they eventually reach. In practice, it sets the company’s own materials against what each audience assumes and has already seen in comparable cases. What the audience worries about now is usually where the gap surfaces first.
Across markets, we draw on selected information-quality principles from the EU Prospectus Regulation to guide service design and internal review. We use them to keep conclusions grounded in evidence, make material limitations clear and describe the risks specific to the company.
The method library is published on this site.
A first message
A first message can stay short and at a high level: the decision in front of management and when it has to be made. Write to the practice to begin.
Scope, fees and terms of an engagement are set in the documents both parties sign; the memo’s terms are set in the short agreement both parties confirm.