Professional Power Products

During the dot.com boom at the end of the 1990s, Ken Trent quit his job as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers to move to San Francisco to start a business.

Mr Trent enjoyed great success in selling one business, broke even selling another and lost money selling a third.

So when he moved back to the Midwest about a decade ago Mr Trent was focused on making a success of his new venture, Professional Power Products Inc., a designer and manufacturer of large, custom engineered integrated electrical power generation systems used by technology companies and offshore oil and gas explorers.

When Mr Trent decided to sell Professional Power Products in July 2013, he wanted a M&A data room that would help ensure the best possible valuation. After all he and his team spent a decade growing revenue at the company to $40 million per year from $3 million per annum.

Mr Trent chose Ansarada after entertaining a pitch from Intralinks and asking other CEOs what data room provider they had used for their M&A deals.

“Ansarada had the best technical support, according to customer referrals,” says Mr Trent. “The flexibility of the time frame for doing a transaction with Ansarada was also attractive.”

During the deal Mr Trent liked the ability ansarada gave him to monitor the activity of potential acquirers.

“Eight bidders checking in before final bids were due,” he says. “I could see who was looking at what and how many times that helped me gather some intelligence and color on the bidders.”

Mr Trent eventually settled on Nasdaq-listed Power Solutions International Inc., an engineering and manufacturer of alternative-fuel and conventional power systems, as the successful bidder.

The deal was worth $50 million, including debt.

Mr Trent hired Chicago-based investment bank Livingstone Partners as his M&A advisors. They too liked Ansarada.

“What the investment bankers liked as managers of the M&A process was that tens of thousands of documents uploaded seamlessly,” says Mr Trent. “The search function on Ansarada for documents worked very well.”

Ken Trent, former CEO, Professional Power Products Inc

Designer and manufacturer of large, custom engineered integrated electrical power generation systems.