The Intralinks Dealnexus™ Knowledge Series is a monthly post of topical articles authored by members of the Intralinks Dealnexus team, created to help you make the most of the expansive platform and deal ecosystem. In this post, youll learn how the Buy-Side Mandates functionality helps connect buyers and sellers today.  

Many of you are already using our online deal sourcing and marketing platform, Intralinks Dealnexus™. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, our platform helps M&A professionals interact with other dealmakers to securely and discretely market and source deals, from start to finish.

Today, our Intralinks Dealnexus community is made up of 10,000 dealmakers, and we more recently introduced a tablet version of our Intralinks Dealnexus mobile app to help you market and source deals on-the-go — allowing you to receive, respond to, and act on deal information requests faster.

To help you make the most of our Intralinks Dealnexus platform and deal ecosystem, we’re excited to share the first installment of our new, monthly Intralinks Dealnexus Knowledge Series.

Today’s topic is all about Buy-Side Mandates. About half of all successfully closed deals facilitated by the Intralinks Dealnexus platform stem from Buy-Side Mandates — this functionality is one of the most powerful and relevant ways Intralinks Dealnexus connects buyers and sellers today. Buy-Side Mandates are of significant value to both buy-side and sell-side. Read below to find out why.

Benefits for the Buy-side

A Buy-Side Mandate is a concise, user-defined set of specific target acquisition criteria such as desired industry, geography, minimum revenue, and EBITDA — which strategic and financial acquirers can instantly broadcast to the Intralinks Dealnexus community.

The Buy-Side Mandate allows buy-side members (such as corporations and private equity groups) to clearly communicate precise acquisition criteria to more than 3,000 investment banks and M&A advisory firms that are registered on Intralinks Dealnexus. In doing so, members can attract proprietary deal opportunities — even if a deal profile does not yet exist within Intralinks Dealnexus. For example, if a sell-side advisory professional represents a client that aligns closely with the criteria indicated in a Buy-Side Mandate, that advisor can immediately and directly reach out to the buyer who issued the Buy-Side Mandate.

Benefits for the Sell-side

For sell-side members, Buy-Side Mandates can provide unrivaled real-time intelligence about active search campaigns from over 2,500 financial and strategic buyers. Not only are these Buy-Side Mandates created directly by private equity and corporate development professionals, but they are also issued in real-time — making them among the most up-to-date and relevant sources of investment preferences available.

Buy-Side Mandates provide valuable insights and are a fundamental component of Intralinks Dealnexus’ proprietary buyer matching algorithm. Given the real-time relevant nature of Buy-Side Mandates in general, Intralinks Dealnexus’ buyer matching algorithm gives maximum weight to any buyer who was matched off a Buy-Side Mandate. In other words, buyer matches in this way represent the highest form of a match and should, for the most part, always merit including that buyer in your deal process.

Overall, keeping an eye on Buy-Side Mandates is an excellent way to enhance your awareness of the buy-side landscape as it pertains to both current and future engagements.

Where to Find Buy-Side Mandates

For those of you who are already on our platform, you may have seen Buy-Side Mandate alerts come through to your inbox. Remember, the frequency at which you receive communications from Intralinks Dealnexus can be adjusted through your account’s Communication Settings, which is accessible from the upper-right hand corner of your screen when logged in.

Besides receiving them in your email inbox, a running list of all active Buy-Side Mandates can be accessed and browsed at any time using the Intralinks Dealnexus internal search engine. Members who have downloaded the Intralinks Dealnexus iPhone app can also review and reply to Buy-Side Mandates directly from their handheld device. Users of the Intralinks Dealnexus mobile app can now fully utilize the professional networking and community element of the platform while also securely managing actionable deal opportunities on-the-go. Check it out if you haven’t already.

I hope you found this first installment of our Intralinks Dealnexus Knowledge Series informative. If you have more questions about Buy-Side Mandates, or Intralinks Dealnexus, you can contact our Dealnexus Member Success Team by email at DealnexusClientSupport@Intralinks.com .

Stay tuned for next month’s installment, where we will explore the difference between a ‘private process’ and ‘marketplace process’ when creating and managing a blind deal profile.