Terry Butcher, Steve Coppell, Michael Gwilliam and Jeff Stelling.

In June, England was gripped by FIFA World Cup fever. The support for England was astonishing and London was an electrifying place to be. You couldn’t turn a corner without seeing the national flag flying from houses, pubs and cars and you could hear the rapturous shouts in support of the country everywhere you went.

Today’s challenging business environment has brought the importance of delivering world-class investor servicing sharply into focus. Institutional investors expect to access their statements and capital calls online, anytime, from anywhere, placing additional pressure on the related management and delivery mechanisms used by private equity firms.

The recent conference, Private Equity Software and Service Provider Showcase organized by 4VCO at the Renaissance Chancery Court hotel in London, therefore provided an excellent opportunity for 150 private equity professionals to gather for a day of presentations, information sharing and networking to understand how technology helps funds to improve internal systems and operations.

Recently, IntraLinks officially launched its wholly owned Latin America regional headquarters in São Paulo, Brazil. I had the pleasure spending a week with our team and attending our launch party. We gathered with clients, partners, associates and friends of IntraLinks at the upscale Hotel Fasano to celebrate our previous accomplishments and outline our business plans and commitment to the Latin American region now that we have expanded our presence. There were many interesting conversations but what struck me was how the regional business needs paralleled and aligned with companies in other global business centers. Whether it’s a virtual data room for mergers and acquisitions, an online workspace for fund raising or the debt capital markets or a reporting solution for CVM480 compliance — it's clear that business people face the same challenges whether they’re located in Brazil or anywhere else in the world — and all were well suited for the IntraLinks platform.

The steamy summer heat in Washington, DC, was no match for the hothouse of ideas and innovations on display at the recent 46th Annual DIA Meeting. The event was well attended by all levels of Life Sciences professionals. Because this premier event for the pharmaceutical & biotech industry draws the industry’s best minds from around the world, it was no surprise that many of the discussions in the hallways, meeting rooms and social events revolved around the increasingly global nature of clinical trials. The impact of this expansion is already being felt — and a lot of the talk was about how this will play out in the future.

Last month I attended the inaugural “Dealmakers of the Year Awards” at Scott’s restaurant in London. The event, hosted by IntraLinks with the support of the Mergermarket Group, celebrated the achievements of M&A practitioners who have excelled in their field during the past 12 months in spite the financial crisis and its dramatic effect on global M&A deal volumes.

Short listing for the event was undertaken independently by mergermarket using the mergermarket.com M&A deals database which tracks transactions where the value is greater than €5m. Financial advisors and lawyers qualified on the basis of advice given on transactions to UK-based corporations, targets, vendors and acquirers. Selection was based on both the total volume and value of deals advised on.