Aurignac Finance chooses Entropia for a defence deal

For 20 years, Aurignac Finance has advised owners and executives of small and medium-sized companies, major international groups and financial investors on their corporate finance transactions. Its core sectors include aerospace and defence (where confidentiality requirements are among the most demanding on the market), industry, energy transition and healthcare.

For a defence deal closed this month, the team ran its data room on Entropia. On this mandate, the client wanted a sovereign data room, hosted in France or in Europe. Entropia met that requirement.

Karim Ouabdellah, Associate, oversaw the setup alongside the partner and the VP in charge of the deal. Lawyers, the client and the counterparties then worked in it through to closing. He tells us about it.

"Switching data room providers isn't an obvious move once you have your habits. But once you've worked on Entropia, I think it's hard to go back to anything else!"

A first deal with no access issues to handle

On a live deal, emails from counterparties who can't log in or can't find a document are part of the daily routine. Not this time.

"This is the first time I didn't receive a single email from a counterparty saying: I can't log in, I can't find this document. Not one."

A data room designed for the people who work in it

Karim was onboarded by Entropia's support team at the start of the deal. In practice, he thinks he could have skipped it.

"Even if I had never used a data room before, I don't think I would have needed the onboarding. Everything is intuitive. You can tell this data room was built for the people who actually work in it."

He points to how intuitive the features are, down to the small details of day-to-day data room management: keyboard shortcuts to rename a document or preview it instantly, the advanced index management tools, and so on.

"On Entropia, not once did I think a feature was poorly designed. Everything is built to save time and take mental load off your plate."

Redaction and search: where other tools fall short

Assisted redaction exists elsewhere. On Entropia, it actually works.

"On other solutions, one time out of two or three, automatic redaction masks the wrong things. So you end up doing everything by hand. On Entropia, I only used the AI redaction assistant. It was fast, it found the right elements in the right places, and all I had to do was approve."

Same story for search: by querying the data room in natural language, he found the passages he was looking for, including in poorly scanned documents.

Learn more about Entropia's AI features

Highly responsive support, and a product change shipped on his request

Karim contacted support once, about a password-protected PDF the counterparties couldn't open.

"What I appreciated is that not only was the issue handled very quickly, but the support team asked whether I had ideas to improve how this kind of situation is handled… and shipped them within the week!"

He also notes the pace of updates. It's true that we ship fast, taking every user's feedback into account. We release a new version of the application every week.

"You see the upgrades happen in real time. You rely on user experience to improve the product."

Thank you to Karim and the Aurignac Finance team for their trust on a deal where confidentiality is non-negotiable.

About Aurignac Finance

Aurignac Finance is a small and mid-cap M&A advisory firm founded 20 years ago in Paris. The team advises owners and executives of small and medium-sized companies, major international groups and financial investors on tailor-made corporate finance transactions: divestments, acquisitions and build-ups, structured finance and carve-outs, for French and international companies valued between €10 and €200 million.

As the exclusive member in France of Mergers Alliance, the global leading network of independent M&A advisors, Aurignac Finance offers its clients privileged access to counterparties in France and abroad. Its DNA: "Serve and enable".

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