Advisory mandate · CAP-06
Buy-side advisory for the contracts you cannot unsign.
Your counterparty negotiates this agreement every week. You negotiate it every few years. That asymmetry is the entire reason buy-side advisory exists, and it is not solved by more procurement process.
Three ways we work, and you pick
- —Advise from behind
Your team runs the negotiation and the counterparty never knows we are involved. We brief before every session, review every draft, and tell you what to hold and what to trade. The most common mode, and the most discreet.
- —Lead alongside
We are in the room as part of your team. Useful when the technical detail is dense or the relationship needs someone who can be firm without your team having to be.
- —Run the table
We negotiate as your mandated representative. Appropriate on large mandates, on anonymous approaches, or where you need a layer between you and the outcome.
Where buy-side leverage is usually lost
Almost always before the negotiation formally begins.
- Timeline pressure you created. A board date, a launch commitment or a lapsing contract handed to the counterparty as information. The moment they know your deadline, the deadline is theirs.
- Single-source drift. The technical evaluation narrows to one vendor before commercial terms are discussed, and the alternative is no longer credible. Keeping a genuine second option alive is worth more than any clause.
- Incumbent renewal inertia. The most expensive contract in most organisations is the one nobody tested. Renewals are negotiated against last year's paper rather than this year's market.
- No benchmark. Without knowing what comparable buyers are paying, the first number becomes the anchor and every subsequent concession feels like a win.
- Anchoring on price alone. Term length, ramp, SLA remedies, escalators, expansion rights and exit routinely carry more value than the headline rate, and are conceded to protect it.
- A circulated requirement. If your need has been broadcast — an open RFP, a wide search, a talkative advisor — every counterparty knows the shape of the field. This is the leak we are structured to avoid.
The same failure modes recur whether the contract is a colocation lease, a GPU allocation or a GPUaaS agreement — what changes is which clause carries the exposure. The advisory is deliberately structured so that pointing that out costs us nothing; the reasoning behind that structure is worth reading before you retain anyone, including us.
What discretion actually means here
Nothing about your requirement is circulated in order to find counterparties. We approach them directly, one at a time, and only those you approve learn anything specific. First contact can be made anonymously, an MNDA is available on request, and a mandate can run to completion without the wider market learning you were ever in it.
For buyers in a competitive market, that is often worth more than any single term in the contract.
Asked on this mandate.
01Does the counterparty have to know you are involved?
No. In our most common mode, they never do. You decide how visible we are, and that decision is reversible at any point in the mandate.
02What kinds of contracts do you work on?
Enterprise infrastructure and technology agreements — colocation and capacity, GPU and hardware supply, GPUaaS and cloud commitments, power and energy supply, and the master agreements underneath them.
03How is this different from a procurement consultancy?
Process consultancies improve how you buy. We work the specific deal in front of you, with the market knowledge and the counterparty relationships to know what is actually achievable on it. And we cost the buyer nothing.
04You are paid by the ecosystem. How is that not a conflict?
It is the fair question. The answer is structural: we hold no inventory and take no position in your deal, so nothing we put in front of you is something we need you to take. We are only useful to the ecosystem for as long as buyers keep trusting us, which makes protecting that trust the whole job.
05We only have one viable vendor. Is there anything to negotiate?
Usually more than you think, and often the first thing worth testing is whether the alternative is genuinely non-viable or merely unfamiliar. Even in a true single-source position, term structure, remedies and exit remain open.
Data center capacity sourcing
Retail and wholesale colocation up to 150 kW per rack, sourced globally and benchmarked against real comparables.
Open the mandate →ContractsGPUaaS & AI cloud negotiation
Reserved capacity and committed-spend agreements, read line by line before a multi-year number is signed.
Open the mandate →ComputeGPU cluster procurement
H100, H200, GB300 and the supply agreements around them — allocation, delivery, and remedies when the vendor slips.
Open the mandate →Tell us what is on the table.
Early, mid-negotiation or at renewal. The first conversation costs you nothing but the time it takes to have it.