Unbeatable security: KF Finance’s seven years of M&A success with Ideals

Overview

KF Finance started in 2009, as a niche investment banking firm in Slovenia. Today, with over 120 professionals spread across 9 countries, they provide a comprehensive range of financial advisory services across Eastern Europe.

In 2013, as part of their digital transformation, they needed to optimize security and efficiency during M&A. This became even more important as they took on the challenging task of handling the sale of Litostroj Power, a power plant equipment maker, by its then owner, Cimos.

After evaluating several virtual data rooms, KF Finance ultimately chose Ideals for its “exceptional user-friendliness” and state-of-the-art security features, “Ideals is always our first choice when selecting a VDR provider!”

The context

KF Finance is part of the KF Finance Group, which includes companies active in the field of debt collection and credit reporting, non-performing loans servicing, accounting, and management of alternative investment funds.

In the first five years of its existence, the firm excelled in business valuation, real estate valuation, financial restructuring, and other financial advisory services. Their impressive work was acknowledged in 2014 when the company was rated Corporate LiveWire’s “Business Valuation Company of the Year.”

Buoyed by this success, the firm embarked on an ambitious expansion plan, establishing branches in Zagreb and Belgrade, while simultaneously venturing into new business areas such as non-performing loans and accountancy via a series of acquisitions.

As the company continued to grow and take on increasingly complex M&A deals, relying on email and online document exchanges was no longer sufficient.

Key challenges

When comparing options, they focused on bank-grade security and features that would allow them to collaborate securely with potential bidders, their requirements were for a tool that provided:

• Differentiated users roles with designated access levels
• Transparency, with real-time tracking of who saw, edited or downloaded files
• Granular reports to ensure tracking each deal’s progress comprehensively

Solution

KF Finance found that Ideals met all their requirements and over the years, they have opened 11 data rooms for different transactions, mostly M&A.

Nives Sedej, KF Finance’s Manager, was impressed by Ideals’ unwavering commitment to customer service and excellence, “all of our questions were resolved smoothly and very fast,” she remarked.

With Ideals, the firm better served clients by:

• Rapidly uploading documents with the drag-and-drop function
• Protecting confidential data with the in-built redaction 
• Tracking all queries and responses on the Q&A module
• Using different devices to access documents from anywhere at anytime

The future

The company’s most recent transaction using Ideals was the sale of Tinex, a leading Slovenian distributor of mechanical power transmission technology, to the global industrial group Axel Johnson International.

Looking ahead, KF Finance plans to use Ideals for all future deals, citing the platform’s user-friendly design and seamless integration with mobile devices as key selling points.

The features “are very well-designed and easy to use, both on computers and mobile phones,” concludes Nives.