Drooms acquires Swiss fintech firm DealMarket
Jan Hoffmeister, Drooms
Drooms, a provider of virtual data rooms, has agreed a deal to acquire DealMarket with effect from 1 January 2017 to boost its service portfolio for the entire asset lifecycle.
Zurich-based DealMarket has developed a cloud-based software package for private equity investors, family offices and corporate finance experts, allowing them to manage the deal flow and exchange with internal and external parties. It also offers a global marketplace for investors and service providers to list their own items for sale as well as search for deals and services from other parties.
Drooms says it offers the exchange of confidential documents, while DealMarket provides process management for investments.
The acquisition creates a “link between both platforms” and Jan Hoffmeister, co-founder and CEO of Drooms, says the deal means it is “closing in on our target of managing the entire lifecycle of valuable assets”.
For example, this could start from the initial customer contacts, through the purchase and hold phase right up to a potential sale of the asset.
The eleven-strong DealMarket team will work under the Drooms brand. Urs Häusler, managing director of DealMarket, will be responsible for the global roll-out and manage the Swiss market for Drooms.
Drooms on
Drooms was founded in 2001 by Hoffmeister, a former corporate finance and M&A manager at Siemens, and Alexandre Grellier, a former lawyer at Lehman Brothers.
Initially, it offered physical data rooms for transactions. The real goal, however, was to digitise this process and offer a fully-fledged online due diligence platform, Hoffmeister recalls, and as soon as technology allowed Drooms’ platform went virtual.
Today, 25,000 companies worldwide use Drooms’ digital platform, with Swiss banking giant UBS among key clients.
The company originates in Germany and has offices in Frankfurt, London, Zug, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid and Milan.
