REPOST: Australia: M&A Predator or Prey?

Intralinks correspondent Samantha Marks discusses Australia’s growing role in the global economy and what it means for Australian companies, which stand in between seizing their opportunities on their and being to those by other countries. Read this article in full at the Intralinks blog.

The Australian economy is in a very strong position compared to most locales around the globe. The current environment is perfectly suited to local business adopting a predatory role in global business transactions by seizing opportunities, moving decisively and adapting to new trends in due diligence.

Image source: foxnews.com

But increased interest in Australian assets could lead to local business becoming the hunted instead of the hunter if they wait too long or fail to adapt.

The recent Dealmakers ANZ event in Sydney hosted an intelligent and thought provoking panel discussion about the challenges and opportunities changing the shape of the M&A landscape.

Image source: vatis.com.au

Should earn-outs be restructured? Nick Humphrey, partner with law firm Sparke Helmore, thinks Australia should learn from how these are structured in the US and UK but his peer Mark Stanbridge of Ashurst is not so sure.

Image source: andrewboon.com

How should business adapt to longer due diligence cycles? Matt Porzio, Vice President of Strategy and Product Marketing, points out that while there are comparatively fewer bidders on deals, the amount of information reviewed under due diligence has increased by 40% year on year. Addressing this growing data challenge without losing momentum on deals has made the use of the right technology even more crucial. Peter Dunne of Herbert Smith Freehills agrees technology creates the opportunity for the buy-side to effectively flip control of the deal instead of waiting for the sell-side to set the parameters.

Why are ‘bear hugs’ becoming an increasingly popular and aggressive tool by predatory companies? Jonathan Algar, partner at law firm Clayton Utz, suggested that bear hugs have “taken the place of the hostile takeover,” by putting price pressure on target boards and forcing due diligence without a commitment to proceed to a takeover.

With the latest Deal Flow Indicator results indicating a return to strength in the market, M&A professionals will be poised to leap on emerging opportunities. Just don’t stand still too long in the tall grass.

Ron Hovsepian is the President, CEO, and director of Intralinks, a company that provides secure inter-enterprise collaborative solutions over the cloud. Visit this webpage for more updates.

Repost: Daily Report: Roots of a Rivalry in Cloud Computing

In any booming industry, rivalries are inevitable. In this article, The New York Times delves into the storm cooking in the Cloud.

If the Hatfields and McCoys lived in Silicon Valley, they would be fighting with piles of cash and lines of software code instead of knives and shotguns. And the fight would be over who wins the most customers in the computer industry’s growing “cloud” of software services, Quentin Hardy writes in The New York Times.

That is how it is for Aneel Bhusri and Zachary Nelson, whose companies are in contention over the next major shift in computing. In a way, the men are reliving history.

Two decades ago, their mentors feuded, and that time, too, the dispute took place against the backdrop of a major shift in corporate computing — when customers gave up their mainframes and moved to software that relied on personal computers closely connected to a server.

Mr. Nelson, the chief executive of NetSuite, used to work for Lawrence J. Ellison, the billionaire chief executive of Oracle.

Mr. Bhusri, co-founder of a competitor company called Workday, used to work for David Duffield, a rival of Mr. Ellison’s. Mr. Duffield is the low-profile founder of PeopleSoft, a once-powerful maker of corporate software that Oracle acquired in a bitter, 17-month hostile takeover fight.

How bitter? Oracle defeated a federal antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department before it could reel in its rival. And a month after PeopleSoft was acquired, 5,000 of its 11,000 employees were laid off.

Together, NetSuite and Workday are among a growing circle of technology outfits poised to cash in on the migration to cloud computing services and perhaps elbow aside today’s corporate software giants, like Oracle and the German company SAP.

Ron Hovsepian corporate offers collaborative solutions based on the cloud. More information on its services can be accessed on this website.