Forensic Accounting & Cost Analytics
Brattle’s Sydney-based team combines expertise in forensic accounting, operations, and cost analytics to support clients in complex, high-stakes matters. We apply rigorous analytical frameworks to assess financial performance, estimate costs, and prepare economic counterfactuals across a wide range of disputes and strategic engagements. Our work is grounded in practical experience and delivers clear, defensible insights that stand up to scrutiny.
Forensic Accounting
Our experts are often called upon to apply their accounting expertise to complex and time-sensitive matters, including commercial litigation, class actions, historical reparations, and investigations. They apply managerial accounting concepts to track flows of financial information, analyse financial forecasts and disclosure processes, and prepare defensible damages estimates. Our team has also supported former CFOs and accounting professors in their roles as testifying experts in litigation.
Cost Analytics
The Sydney team has deep expertise in cost analytics, including the assessment and design of cost allocation methodologies, “but-for” cost and lost profit estimates, and cost recovery and cost-plus pricing. Our consultants specialise in designing costing analyses and identifying relevant costs, mapping operating processes, and understanding complex production dynamics that drive cost behaviour.
Our experts have applied these skills across a wide range of strategic consulting and litigation matters, including restructuring engagements, fee and price reviews, breach of contract disputes, excessive fee and price-gouging matters, M&A investigations, intellectual property theft disputes, and competition matters.
Our approach is grounded in extensive practical experience and widely accepted cost accounting and economic frameworks. We apply a unique multidisciplinary approach – combining systems and operating expertise with domain perspectives and tools from economics, cost accounting, and data science – to deliver clear, defensible analyses.
Our consultants have been retained by:
- Government entities to assess cost recovery fees and charges
- Regulatory agencies to evaluate claims of cost savings and synergies in M&A investigations
- Law firms to defend claims of “excessive fees” in complex financial services litigation, including with respect to managed funds and banking institutions
- Medical companies to design cost allocation methodologies and to price new products
- Financial services institutions to develop internal cost and managerial reports
- Academic institutions to review accreditation and examination fees
Representative Engagements
-
Assessment of ‘Excessive Fee’ Claims Made Against a Managed Fund
A Brattle expert was retained by a managed fund to address allegations that a fund charged ‘excessive’ fees and earned windfall profits on advisory fees charged to fund employees who invested in proprietary funds. Our expert analysed the operating and cost structure of the fund complex and opined on the appropriate way to assess profitability.
-
Pricing Strategy for an Australian Medical Device Manufacturer
A Brattle expert served as a pricing consultant for an Australian-based biotechnology company that designed and manufactured medical devices. The expert worked with dozens of business leaders to map production systems, conduct interviews and time-and-motion studies, model cost relationships, and review operating and accounting information. The engagement resulted in pricing recommendations under various production scenarios.
-
User Fee Review for a Multilateral Fisheries Agency
A Brattle expert was retained as a pricing expert for a multilateral fisheries agency in its review of licence fees. The expert worked with agency staff to understand accounting systems and reports, map systems processes, and review the organisation’s cost allocation methodologies. Our expert made a series of information systems and cost recovery recommendations to the governing committee.
-
Financial Assessment in an Australian Government Contract Dispute
In a contractual dispute, a Brattle expert provided a financial assessment comparing the amounts paid to the client – a contractor to an Australian government entity – against certain milestones specified in the contract. The engagement included a detailed analysis of the amounts paid by the government entity under each milestone. The analysis also included a reasonableness assessment of the value of costs of future work to complete under the rescoped contract, and the costs sustained due to program delays.
Contact Our Experts
-
Principal
-
Sydney
For 25 years, Mr. Weemaes has applied economic and managerial accounting frameworks to complex commercial disputes, class actions, and regulatory matters as an expert witness and consulting expert.
