Cellnex Telecom

Cellnex Telecom employed Intralinks to ensure smooth and secure management of the due diligence process ahead of its pending Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Cellnex Telecom case study

Cellnex Telecom

Part-owned by infrastructure company Abertis, Barcelona-based Cellnex Telecom is the main independent infrastructure operator for wireless telecommunication in Europe. 

It offers a site-leasing service for telecommunications operators and provides highly advanced audio-visual services to broadcasters at local, regional and national levels.

In addition, the company is deploying a network of intelligent communication solutions to enable the development of a solid ecosystem for Spain’s Internet of Things.

AZ Capital

Founded in 2004, AZ Capital is an independent investment bank that provides financial advisory services in corporate transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, IPOs, private placements, capital increases and financial restructurings.

The Situation

In May 2015, Abertis sold a 66% stake in Cellnex for €3.24bn in an IPO, with a view to increasing capacity for growth in its core business.

Independent investment bank AZ Capital acted in a financial advisory capacity, helping Cellnex with all its necessary internal preparation including the due diligence required by the banks to underwrite the IPO.

Due to the vast amount of highly sensitive information involved in this process, Cellnex and AZ Capital required a collaboration tool that would allow them to securely share large volumes of confidential documents between parties on both the sell-side and buy-side of the transaction.

It was crucial that access to this information could be effectively managed to prevent any leaks.

The Solution

Members of Cellnex’s legal and financial teams recommended Intralinks, as did AZ Capital, which had used the tool in the past.

Both companies trusted Intralinks’ reputation as a leader in secure collaboration technology and were confident that, by using Intralinks to assign different permission levels to different roles during the IPO process, they could control access to the information, avoiding the possibility of a harmful leak.

It was important that this control and visibility would be maintained throughout the process and beyond, something that Intralinks reporting function would allow. The tool would enable the legal team to see who was accessing any given document and when and, once the project was complete and the Virtual Data Room (VDR) closed, a Compliance Archive would be made available, providing the teams with a complete record of all the activity that had taken place from the start of the process.

The Benefits

Cellnex and AZ Capital could make sure that everything was in place by using a preparation phase VDR before opening up the VDR itself to third parties once the process was underway.

With only one person required to upload documents, the team was able to save time and avoid duplication of effort.

By using a centralized tool which held all information on different roles and access permissions, the team was able to control who was accessing which documents and when, at every point of the process, minimising the chance of a damaging leak.

Throughout the entire process, Intralinks enabled Cellnex to collaborate smoothly and effortlessly with AZ Capital, and allowed both companies to efficiently manage the IPO process between them, saving time and effort while maintaining the high level of security required.