How MARK uses Ideals to
handle M&A, pipeline, and investor relations

Redesigning the real estate investment landscape in core markets across Europe

As a UK-headquartered private equity firm focused on real estate investment, MARK has been using Ideals for the past two years to handle new acquisitions, sales, pipeline management, and investor relations. Having tried other virtual data rooms in the past, their Head of Information Technology claims: “Ideals is the best out of the lot”.

The context

Mark Capital Management Limited has its HQ in London with offices in France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Formed in 2004 from the holdings of the former MAB Group, they subsequently launched a €2 billion platform to facilitate investment in last-mile distribution centers.

In 2020, the company rebranded from Meyer Bergman and expanded its strategy to target new alternative real estate opportunities across Europe and beyond. Since the rebranding, they now have four platforms that continue to look for opportunities within luxury retail, urban logistics worldwide, and UK residential.

Key challenges

As a leading light in mixed urban redevelopment in the UK and Europe, MARK’s activities entail dealing with multiple stakeholders across different economic sectors and countries and the continual exchange of confidential information with both potential partners and other companies.

Technology to facilitate their projects is a must, and the company had been using different platforms for quite some time. While MARK had generally found the features on offer useful, their team was less than happy with the level of customer service that they were getting. That’s when they started looking for better technology that also included premium support. Their key requirements were to:

• Maintain confidential data in a secure virtual environment
• Share relevant information with partners
• Audit who has access to their information and from where
• Have a mechanism for due diligence to give all parties confidence in the processes
• Improve communication and be able to advise hundreds of stakeholders

With the benefit of their considerable experience with virtual data rooms, they knew what they were looking for, and Ideals came up trumps. As their Head of Information Technology said: “With Ideals, it’s very easy to audit who’s accessing what and from where”, and the real clincher was the exemplary customer service “support from Ideals is 11/10” – “second to none, always fantastic.”

Solution

When MARK started the process of moving the data from other platforms, their team smartly relied on the desktop tool to upload files from the previous virtual data room. They concluded, “it’s so easy you don’t even need to read the guides to figure it out.” 

Over the years, the company allocated each data room to an in-house owner; checking with them every quarter to see how each project was progressing. MARK’s team was impressed that they could:

• Train new users really fast with 24/7 support from Ideals
• Ensure communication with different partners remained organized and completely confidential, with separated permission levels and filters in the Q&A Forum
• Use their VDR landing page to check what rooms were closed once the projects were finished
• Keep a regular checklist to track actions were performed and by whom
• Ensure that multifactorial identification was enabled
• Get a fast turnaround when ordering flash drives with all the project details when the rooms were closed

The future

As MARK seeks new opportunities in European residentials, while retaining their logistics interests and exploring the growing appetite for digital real estate, they will continue to count on Ideals virtual data rooms.

Their three top reasons for keeping Ideals are the fantastic support, the ease of use, and the security features.

Among MARK’s current portfolio is a mixed office and retail development in Dublin due to be completed this year, and a 15-acre mixed-use development in Monaco using the most sustainable building techniques scheduled to finish in 2024. The future of MARK is as promising as their past and their latest project is a 50% stake in a £500 million residential development in Kensington, London.