Pioneer Investments case study

iRooms supports a robust and effective bid process for global asset manager

UniCredit launched a strategic review of the Pioneer Investments business in May 2010. A part of this process involved a wide range of bidders, who were able to access more than 120,000 pages of information via an iRooms virtual data room. The iRooms VDR operated between December 2010 and April 2011 and provided access to more than 400 individual users.

Pioneer Investments was founded in 1928 with the establishment of the Pioneer Fund, the third-oldest mutual fund in the United States. Today it has around €178 billion assets under management (AUM) and offers a wide range of products across both traditional and nontraditional asset classes. These are managed by its global investment centres in Boston, Dublin and other local investment centres like Milan, Munich, Warsaw.

Davide Colombo, Global Head of Organisation at Pioneer Investments said, "We found that the iRooms VDR was of a higher quality than other systems and offered value for money. Our selection was based on a combination of recommendation, value and quality."

Pioneer Investments worked with a local project manager in Milan as well as Imprima's team in London to set up the data room, which included uploading 120,000 pages of documentation. "The outcome of the strategic review, which was completed in April this year, was to focus on accelerating Pioneer Investments' organic growth. However, the bid process with Imprima went smoothly", said David Colombo.

"The system was easy to use and we didn't need any formal or specialist training to set it up. The process of establishing different levels of security access was straightforward and handled for us by the Imprima team. We also found it easy to receive and manage questions sent to us about the organisation from the various bidders electronically. When we found that the indexing needed to be changed on our data room, the Imprima team in London worked over the weekend to ensure it was corrected. We found that reporting from iRooms was effective and that the system was safe and secure."

iRooms - local support and global 24/7 service

Pioneer Investments particularly valued having access to a local project manager based near its office in Milan, as well as having 24/7 access to the support and development team in London.

"Imprima iRooms helped us manage a complex yet effective international bid process that involved more than 120,000 documents and over 400 people. We are pleased with the way that iRooms worked during the bid process."