Intralinks to expand presence in Korea
Javier Colado, president of Intralinks’ Asia Pacific region, introduces its virtual data room service at a press conference at a restaurant in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, Wednesday. The company said it opened a Seoul office to provide its cloud-based mergers and acquisitions deal platform to Korean customers. / Courtesy of Intralinks
By Lee Min-hyung
Intralinks, the world’s leading mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal platform provider, is expanding its business portfolio into the Korean market, which it believes has the highest growth potential in Asia.
The U.S.-based deal outsourcing company said Wednesday it had decided to operate its cloud-based virtual data room service in Korea.
The move is in line with a company report that predicts deal flows. It said the size of mergers and acquisition (M&A) deals in Korea will increase 42 percent in the fourth quarter this year, on a yearly basis. The company said the market-predicting tool is the leading indicator that shows whether M&A deals will be successful six months later.
“Korea has become the fourth-largest market in the Asia-Pacific region, but it is the fastest growing one,” Javier Colado, president of Intralinks’ Asia-Pacific region, said.
He said Korea lags behind China, Japan and Australia in the scale of annual M&A deals, but has the largest growth potential in the region.
The company said it will expand its business strategy after working with the nation’s major conglomerates.
“Our goal is to target the big companies as they have their own corporate development teams that deal with M&As,” he said.
This will give the company the opportunity to leverage their services and optimize their businesses, he said.
“We look for areas where we find the most professionals in that M&A space,” said Oliver Manojlovic, the company’s North Asia regional director. “We first approach them to start to build up relationships. Large conglomerates have special teams to deal with M&As.”
He said the company will expand its business portfolios after the trust-building process.
“This is not our first step into Korea,” he said. “We have been working with Korean companies for the last five years. That gave us a soft exposure to the market to understand a little bit of the difficult climates.”
Korea’s export and technology-driven environment is another factor for the company’s decision to start the Korean business, which it says is the key to a successful M&A deal.
“There is intrinsic motivation for Korean companies especially focusing on high technology,” he said. “Korean companies have these tools to be globally successful.”
Colado said the nation’s family-owned business environment was not a challenge.
“In many cases, owners are reluctant to use the technology as they are concerned about possible security leaks,” he said. But the company puts priority on controlling every document stored in the virtual data room, he said.