DSM/Ocean Nutrition Canada Limited

This case study focuses on how Intralinks helped ONC and its then shareholders streamline the auction process and achieve maximum value, resulting in its purchase by DSM, a global science-based company extending its product portfolio in the nutritional health category. 

"Our experience using Intralinks was excellent, and everyone I dealt with was professional and courteous. In addition, the porting of data from our old data room into Intralinks was seamless and timely due to Intralinks.” 

– Charles Perez, Director of Legal Affairs, Ocean Nutrition

The Problem

ONC had the painstaking task of porting data from their existing database in order to commence the auction process. They also needed a way to easily upload what would be over 10,000 pages of documents to a virtual platform. Meeting the needs of many different users—shareholders, legal, finance, HR, operations specialists, and more— with different access privileges was also a complex challenge. Prior to Intralinks, ONC had used a consume-grade database. However, with the breadth of transaction the company was undertaking for this acquisition, a more flexible deal platform was crucial.

The Implications

ONC, its shareholders, and advisors knew they needed to upload the right documents with the right permissions to the platform in order to ensure that deal information not only remained secure, but that the process continued to move forward smoothly. They also needed to notify the right people at every phase of the deal. Without the right deal platform, a slow, tedious start to the entire transaction could cost them the deal. A consumer-grade data room would have been more time-consuming for the team. These solutions didn’t allow the controllable document permissions, an easy interface, or flexible file structure—and each could cause operational slowdowns in the deal, the risk of leaks and deal fatigue.

The Solution

The ONC sale team needed a full-featured deal platform that would give them the flexibility to create an exchange with their own file structure, while providing the control they needed over which users could access particular information. Since a Global Investment Bank and long standing client of Intralinks was leading the deal, ONC adopted one of the bank’s proposed solutions from a shortlist: Intralinks. Intralinks offered ONC robust uploading and document permissioning features; the company could optimize each phase of the deal cycle by being better able to upload and track documents, conduct Q&A and—most important—port data from their existing database. 

The Result

It wasn’t long before Intralinks had the solution up and running for ONC. In no time, Intralinks was able to seamlessly port existing data into ONC’s new solution. Intralinks saved ONC even more valuable time with fast, seamless uploads of large volumes of documents and automated notifications to let users know when documents were posted or updated. The ONC team could also tailor access privileges by document or group. Intralinks Q&A feature came in handy as well— providing ONC with noticeable efficiencies in collecting questions and disseminating answers through the proper subject matter experts. The acquisition of Ocean Nutrition was successful —and ran smoothly over a three-month process.

The Benefits

Intralinks offers M&A teams an industry-leading, feature-rich and user-friendly way to navigate the M&A transaction. Deal teams can easily populate a user-created online exchange to take the heavy lifting out of due diligence, marketing, Q&A, negotiations and even post-deal archiving. An added benefit for the ONC team, in this case, was the ability to track who was accessing certain documents, and when. This provided useful intelligence to the sale team. Compared to typical data rooms, the robust features of Intralinks were the virtual sea change that helped make the Ocean Nutrition deal a success.