Data Rooms for Investment Banking
What is investment banking?
Investment banking can mean two things:
a) the activity of giving advice on investment opportunities to individuals and organizations
b) the division of a bank that gives advice on underwriting and M&A.
What about an investment bank — what is it? It’s a financial institution whose main business is investment banking.
Modern investment banking specialties
Unlike other kinds of banks, an investment bank does not take deposits. Instead, it assists businesses in complex investment transactions — for instance, providing guidance in underwriting new debt and equity securities.
Investment banks also aid their clients by facilitating mergers and acquisitions, working as intermediaries both for corporations and private investors. Other activities carried out by investment banks include:
- equity research
- sales and trading
- asset management
What is an investment banking virtual data room?
An investment banking virtual data room is a secure online space where investment bankers and other interested parties can store, share and access confidential financial documents. An online data room plays an important role in investment banking, simplifying certain processes and allowing investment bankers to have full control of the information they share.
Investment banks use virtual data rooms to improve efficiency in financial transactions such as a mergers and acquisitions process, or an initial public offering (IPO). Virtual data rooms are particularly important during the due diligence process, since they allow stakeholders to securely store and share all the sensitive documents that are needed for each party to decide whether they want to go ahead with the deal.
By using a virtual data room, all those involved in an investment banking deal avoid the main downsides of physical data rooms: time-consuming processes for creating and updating physical documents, difficult access for interested parties who are located elsewhere, and lower data security.
Regarding the latter, it may sound strange to say virtual data rooms are more secure than traditional data rooms. Is the cloud really a more secure location to store confidential documents than a locked physical room?
The fact is, we usually forget that until physical documents are locked in a physical data room, they can be misplaced, lost, copied, or stolen — whereas documents created inside the data room are protected by a series of measures that make it next to impossible to leak them.
Besides offering greater security than traditional data rooms, VDR software also eliminates the disadvantages of other online file-sharing services — such as email, instant messaging, and storage platforms like WeTransfer, GoogleDrive and Dropbox.
In fact, while these services can be perfect for sharing non-confidential information, they cannot ensure confidential documents and data will stay private and protected. They are also inefficient when there’s a need to exchange large volumes of data with dozens of people.
Reasons to use data rooms for investment banking
The many benefits of using virtual deal rooms for investment banking include:
- Reducing the amount of work. By using communication tools in data rooms, like the Q&A section, you can eliminate duplicate work. You can easily assign tasks, give certain types of permissions to different users. There is also a convenient indexing system available, which allows you to find the needed document quickly.
- Cost-efficiency. Using a virtual data room is less expensive than handling physical documentation and all costs related to the storage and security of those files. The data room providers offer affordable plans, depending on the types of projects you’re working on and your needs.
- Accessibility. In a virtual data room, you get an intuitive design, so you don’t need to spend additional time learning new complex software.
- Improving collaboration. With communication features, like the Q&A section and commenting, the engagement between stakeholders is increased, which helps to achieve better results and avoid miscommunications.
- Securing documents. Complex deals, like M&A, involve the review of many documents that include sensitive information. Security is the main priority for the data room providers. Compliance with different security guidelines and standards shows the reliability of the data room. The VDR serves as a safe and secure environment to store the company’s crucial information, reducing the risk of a data leak.
- Improving accountability. The data room tracking and analytics features allow investment bankers to track tasks and processes in the room. It’s extremely valuable, as it makes all actions within the data room transparent. As you assign a task to users or give permissions to the files, you hold them accountable for their actions, as you can check the history of changes in the document. Investment bankers can also use data from reports to predict potential issues or interests of buyers and sellers.
- Speeding up the procedures. Transactions like M&As can take up much time; they tend to close faster when using a virtual deal room. Due to extensive security, communication, and project management features, less time is spent on document preparation.
How to use virtual data rooms for investment banking
Virtual data rooms can be used in investment banking as strategic tools to handle mergers and acquisitions. All stages of this complex procedure can be handled in one place, and bankers can quickly share or review the documents from the parties involved.
Here’s what investment bankers can do in virtual data rooms:
1. Choose the best time for a transaction
Many factors play a role in a successful transaction, and market conditions are one of them. Investment bankers who use data room software have access to information that can help them to predict the optimal conditions to close the most suitable deal for their clients.
From activity reports, they see the investors’ behavior, which shows their interest and engagement. When the conditions are good, bankers can quickly close the deal.
2. Create a strong acquisition case
One of the responsibilities of investment bankers is preparing a compelling acquisition case to present to investors. Bankers should understand the company to be able to evaluate it properly.
That’s why it’s important to have all the needed documents about the client in one place to build a strong case, so there will be a better chance of completing the transaction successfully.
3. Analyze the interest of potential investors
Using activity reports from the data room will help investment bankers create the right approach for investors, as bankers can gauge each investor’s interest from their activity inside the data room.
4. Prepare documentation for due diligence
Preparing documents for a due diligence process requires collecting all needed documents from the clients, organizing them, then making them accessible. When carried out physically, this process can take up to a few months — but with a VDR, collecting, sharing, and organizing documents is much quicker and less stressful. The data room provides convenient scanning, indexing and naming features, which make document management much simpler and faster.
5. Authorize involved parties
When using a virtual data room, investment bankers have security features that allow them to control permissions for various documents. During the early stages of an M&A process, it’s very important that bankers be able to give only limited access to specific information. As the process progresses, permissions can be modified to allow users to see more documents.
Tips for choosing the best data room for investment banking
When choosing a data room provider for investment banking, there are certain aspects that you should take into consideration. These include:
- Permission features. These features provide a secure environment for transactions, as the administrator has full control over the process and documents. The ability to change permissions for files at different stages of the process will minimize the risk of exposing sensitive data or falling victim to a security breach.
- Project management features. In investment banking, there are many complex projects, which require dealing with huge amounts of data. A good data room should allow you to manage multiple projects simultaneously, and give you the ability to lead deals for their entire business cycle, by providing the appropriate environment for you to easily perform all necessary tasks.
- Security. Check the VDR provider’s website to make sure it’s compliant with security regulations and guidelines, and provides security features such as watermarks, permissions, limited viewing, expiration dates, etc. During complex transactions involving the sharing of confidential information, security is the top priority.
- Features that are specific for investment banking deals. VDRs can be used in many industries, but for greater efficiency it’s good to have specific features for investment banking. You will be dealing with tasks such as raising capital, IPOs, private placements, etc., so having tools that are designed especially for these processes will help things move quickly and smoothly.
Best data rooms for investment banking
Here are some of the data rooms most popular with investment bankers:
- iDeals: this VDR has a user-friendly interface, making it easy for investment bankers and their clients to access and operate the platform. Investment banking companies working with the iDeals VDR also report it has great customization features, excellent customer support, and more accessible pricing than similar software.
- DealRoom: investment banking customers report that this VDR is user-friendly. Some customers also note that the project management features DealRoom offers are outstanding.
- DataSite: this data room provider serves the top 25 global investment banks. Datasite offers an accessible interface and high-quality 24/7 customer support.
- EthosData. EthosData has been working with the investment banking industry since 2007, and has been used for thousands of M&A, IPOs, asset sales, and capital-raising campaigns. Ethosdata clients report the platform is user-friendly and customer service is first-class.
When dealing with complex transactions like mergers and acquisitions, it’s important you have documents always ready and available. Great business opportunities can come up unexpectedly — and quickly be gone if you don’t take advantage of them.
Virtual data rooms provide investment banking professionals like yourself with all you need to stay on top of document management, carry out effective collaborations, and close successful deals
