Merrill Corp., best known for its virtual data room, is rebranding the company and renaming itself Datasite, after its well-known VDR. Mergers & Acquisitions asked Rusty Wiley, CEO of Datasite, to explain the changes.

After over 50 years under the Merrill Corp. name, why did the company decide to rebrand?
M&A has evolved, and so have we. Over the last several years, we’ve transformed the company from a collection of financial communications and print-related businesses into a high growth SaaS technology company focused on serving M&A practitioners. Towards the end of that journey, we recognized that our name no longer reflected our current business. So, we knew we needed to change that. Datasite better reflects our mission to focus on our global, SaaS-based technology platform for the M&A community. We want to lead the M&A industry beyond the virtual data room to a digitally enabled future. This is especially important at a time when business continuity is a top focus for our customers. As a cloud-based SaaS company, our platform and tools enable the secure sharing of information.

Why the new name, Datasite?
Datasite is the original name of our platform. Many of our customers and professionals in the M&A industry know us by our platform. So, our new name is something many will recognize but it also reflects our singular focus on our SaaS-based technology platform for M&A.

What is the extent of the rebrand? Is anything else in the company changing?
In addition to a new company name, logo and website, we’ve updated the names of our applications.

Our due diligence application is now Datasite Diligence, and our application for optimizing the early stage asset marketing process is now Datasite Outreach. Customers can expect the same great products and service they have come to know us for – as well as some new ones. We’ll continue to pair our products with our global, 24/7/365 service in 14 languages.

Any other upcoming company news?
We recently opened our new global headquarters at Baker Center in downtown Minneapolis to accommodate our strong record of growth and to reap the benefits of collaborating. The new space can accommodate over 450 employees and brings together for the first time, our sales, service, product, marketing, finance, legal, IT and HR teams under one roof.

Anything else you’d like to add?
We understand and appreciate the impact that the current situation has on businesses around the world and the increased need for collaboration, technology and security in a virtual world. We’re here to help our customers. Virtual collaboration is more important than ever and we are here to ensure secure and efficient ways of work remain possible.