Grisoft

"We saved ourselves a lot of time and agony by going with Intralinks. Most importantly, we kept the transaction moving forward at all times. Potential buyers never sat idle waiting for questions to be answered.” 

– Pierra Caquet, Partner, Benson Oak

The Situation

In the mid-2000s, Grisoft dominated the Czech security software market. Management decided to compete for the global market estimated at US$4.5 billion. The company’s strategy was to sell a stake to international investors who could help drive the business forward. To facilitate the deal, Grisoft chose investment-banking adviser Benson Oak. Getting the deal completed swiftly was the paramount concern.

The Problem

Benson Oak quickly identified a short list of 10 bidders. However, the due diligence process threatened to slow the deal. The highly administrative procedures would take months to complete, and require significant labor.

The Implications

Using a traditional dataroom meant organizing and photocopying thousands of pages of documents and placing them into multiple binders for potential buyers to review.

The Solution

Benson Oak turned to Intralinks to provide a secure, virtual dataroom for sharing documents with potential buyers. Intralinks offered best practices for index structure and document access to ensure the due diligence process worked smoothly for both bidders and Benson Oak.

The Result

The bidding included two rounds. After the first round, Benson Oak identified the list of serious bidders. In the second round, Benson Oak used IntraLinks’ reporting functionality to know who was accessing which documents, and when. Intralinks customer support and variable rights management kept the team focused on the most important tasks and avoided duplicating efforts for different bidders. Despite the involvement of multiple, international parties, the transaction was completed in just six weeks from the first round of due diligence. 

The Benefit

Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors combined to purchase 65% of Grisoft for a total of US $52 million. The deal represented one of Intel’s largest investments in Central and Eastern Europe. Intralinks offered the flexibility and scalability to get the transaction up and running quickly and, more importantly, to close it quickly. The reporting functionality also gave really clear visibility on who was progressing with the due diligence and when.