Applus+
Applus+ successfully used Intralinks to manage its 1.1 billion euro Spanish initial public offering.
Barcelona-based Applus+ is one of the world’s leading testing, inspection, and certification companies. It is focused on helping businesses comply with environmental, quality, health and safety standards and regulations. Employing 19,000 people in 60 countries, the company makes specialized testing equipment for a wide variety of industries, including aeronautics, automotive, oil and gas, and telecommunications. Applus+ reported 2103 revenue of 1.6 billion euros.
THE SITUATION
In 2014, Applus+ shareholders pursued a divestment process that required managing large document volumes. Applus+ had been preparing to share approximately 14,000 documents through its company intranet. Soon, the company management realized that it needed a more sophisticated virtual data room (VDR), with greater versatility and functionality.
Legal document are updated every few months, notes an Applus+ representative. So there were times when employees weren’t sure if they were looking at the latest version of a document or not. “In our internal data room, sometimes a file disappeared or sometimes a file got moved from one place to another and we’d waste a lot of time looking for it,” says the representative.
THE SOLUTION
Applus+ selected the Intralinks Virtual Data Room (VDR) to facilitate a highly complex divestment process. Using Intralinks helped the Applus+ team speed up its transaction preparation with their financial advisors, lawyers, and investment banks.
THE BENEFITS
The company raised 1.1 billion euros during its May 2014 IPO. “In general, I would say that Intralinks helped us save 30-40 percent of our time uploading and managing documents during the IPO process,” says an Applus+ representative. “With Intralinks, we always know that we’re looking at the most recent update of a file.” Also, Applus+ users found the system is easy to learn and very user friendly.
It wasn’t just the system capabilities that appealed to the company. “Apart from the technology,” adds the representative, “the main factor that has made me very happy with Intralinks is that, from the very beginning, we had direct access to our own support person, who can help us with anything related to the data room.”
The representative also says: “My contact was extremely professional, very responsive and super-efficient, and I could call her anytime. To me, that is the greatest value.”
