Client Success Story: National Australia Bank Ltd.

National Australia Bank Limited (NAB) provides financial services to individuals and businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. NAB services clients in consumer banking and wealth, business and private banking, corporate and institutional banking, and New Zealand banking.

“We selected Intralinks and were extremely happy with the outcome. This simplicity and ease of use was reinforced by the positive feedback we received from investors throughout the process.” —Luke Stephens, associate director, private capital syndicate, Corporate & Institutional Banking, NAB

Situation

National Australia Bank Ltd. was successfully mandated as sole Lead Arranger and Bookrunner to syndicate and distribute a long-dated loan financing for a Tier 1 Australian infrastructure transaction.

The transaction syndication was complex and targeted at a wide and diverse investor base across Asia Pacific, with varying degrees of familiarity with Australian loan transactions and the associated platforms used for loan distribution. Given the large number of investors and the varying levels of sophistication and experience with Australian loan transactions, a secure, intuitive and easy-to-use data platform was of the upmost importance, to optimize the syndication process and ensure investors were focused on analyzing the underlying data and documents – thereby delivering an optimal outcome for the client.

In addition to improving the investor experience, such a platform would minimize the administrative burden on the bank’s team, improving their efficiency and freeing up their capacity for productive investor dialogue.

Solution

Luke Stephens, associate director of NAB’s Private Capital Syndicate, had worked with Intralinks in prior roles on different transaction processes, like M&A, and was aware of the value Intralinks can offer to complex transactions over wide geographies. During the preparation phase his team evaluated Intralinks security, functionality and service capabilities against other data platforms, and they concluded Intralinks best served their objectives for de-risking the syndication process and delivering the optimal outcome for their client.

Benefits

The speed and responsiveness of the Intralinks platform proved to be key benefits for all parties, and the solution was well received both internally and from investors throughout the process.

The bank’s team found the Intralinks platform easy to set up, even for first-time users; and, with a designated Intralinks engineer available to talk through the process, the bank made best use of Intralinks’ available features. Setup was facilitated by Intralinks advanced bulk uploading and automated document sorting and review features. The bank also found launching or “going live” was much simpler than with other platforms used in the loan distribution space. Intralinks’ intuitive user interface saved the deal team countless hours by eliminating the need for one-on-one training of investors on how to access different documents and use different features.

For investors, the ease of accessing and downloading the transaction materials allowed them to focus on the underlying transaction and its merits, and not become distracted with trying to learn a complicated new system – a particularly critical benefit for a structured transaction of this nature and size.

After the transaction completed, Intralinks continued to support NAB’s team with data security and transaction activity transparency. “The platform provided an appropriate framework that ensured our confidentiality obligations to our client were maintained, with a readily available audit trail available on request," concluded Stephens. "Intralinks provided me and my team with perhaps the greatest benefit of all: peace of mind.”