How the Deal Room is Changing the Modern M&A Process

Mergers and acquisitions are a delicate process due to the speed at which they need to happen, the amount of legislation and compliance involved and the number of key stakeholders that need up-to-date, sensitive documentation at their fingertips.

The history of M&A transactions pre-virtual data room involves either a very paper-heavy process, or the management of sensitive documentation through one physical dataroom, which often presented logistical challenges when different stakeholders from different companies needed access to documentation.

Now, cloud based solutions have arrived on the market such as Dropbox and Google Drive that make file sharing easier, but don’t solve any of the issues around compliance with data protection legislation, or expert support to take on a lot of the manual work involved in arranging documentation for due diligence. The emergence of virtual deal rooms has not only solved many of these issues, but in many ways it has also changed the M&A process in its entirety.

Security and Legislation

Rather than being a generic service that has been hacked to meet the needs of M&A, virtual deal rooms have been developed to meet the exact legislative requirements that are demanded in a corporate transaction.

Certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001, ISAE3402 SSAE16, plus 256 bit encryption will help meet data protection infrastructure requirements, plus complete control over who can view, edit and print documents give you a secure platform that protects the interests of all parties.

Changing Processes

This increased sharing and security is not only making life easier during the transaction process, but it is actually changing the way the process works altogether. From a labour and time intensive process that involved complicated exchanges of offline documents between different international stakeholders, the virtual data room has ushered in a new way of doing things.

From instant document sharing cutting down on travel to a personalised service that compiles, allocates and manages all files on a centralised system, these changes reduce the complications of due diligence and reduce the risk of a transaction going wrong.

With so much riding on the success of the early, due diligence stage of a transaction, it is vital that technology is used in the right way to create a bespoke, seamless service that ensures clarity and simplicity. With a virtual deal room at the heart of this process, you will give your transaction the best chance of success.