Virtual Data Rooms for M&A in Australia – Due Diligence, Security & Tools

Over 2023–2024, the Australian M&A market slowed in volume, but embraced more complex deals. 

In 2024, Australian M&A deal value reasonably declined in the number of deals that involved domestic acquirers. The most active were US acquirers with up to 65% of cross-border inbound transactions by value.

The highest rates of Australian M&A activity in 2024 were in the technology, consumer goods, energy, and mining industry sectors:

• The Blackstone consortium of investors acquired Australian data centre operator AirTrunk for A$24 billion. The record sale surged private capital and marked 40% of the all-year deal value.

• The market consolidated operating gold assets: Red 5’s merger with Silver Lake Resources, estimated at A$2.2 billion.

• Joint bid by SQM and Hancock Prospecting for Azure Minerals lithium company estimated at A$1.7 billion.

• Energy Fuels acquired Base Resources, the developer of mineral sands, for A$375 million.

Mega deals at over A$1 b. scored the strongest deal value:

• Chemist Warehouse & Sigma Healthcare merger, estimated at A$8.8 b. 
• Compagnie de Saint-Gobain’s acquisition of CSR Limited, estimated at A$4.3 b. 
• Alcoa’s acquisition of Alumina Limited, estimated at A$3.3 billion
• Seven Group’s off-market takeover bid for Boral Limited, estimated at A$2.5 b.
• Ardonagh’s acquisition of PSC Insurance Group, estimated at A$2.2 b. 

A virtual data room (VDR) is a secure online document storage helping companies store and share confidential information and sensitive documents during high-stakes business transactions like mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and initial public offerings (IPOs). World-class VDR technology features robust security, document management, user activity tracking, and customized settings for utmost efficiency and confidentiality.

A virtual data room is a reliable due diligence platform enabling M&A counterparts to run confidential transactions and close successful deals. 

This guide dives deep into 2025 M&A data room Australia insights.

Why M&A professionals use virtual data rooms

To simplify collaboration between M&A stakeholders, virtual data rooms store data in the cloud and are easily accessed. 

With everything arranged and easily managed in a single place, M&A professionals leverage integrated communication and collaboration functionalities.

Managing sensitive data across parties

Protecting and managing sensitive data are vital for all stakeholders and involved parties in M&A deals, including buy-side M&A representatives, sell-side M&A representatives, due diligence advisors, lawyers, and bankers.

M&A buyers primarily assess the acquired company’s liabilities, including its past and future noncompliance with data protection regulations. They need to weigh the target’s attractiveness and all the risks involved.

Ensuring the target’s privacy and data protection compliance during the M&A transaction management is essential to protect the deal from potential non-compliance challenges. 

Virtual deal rooms help M&A buyers safely collect sensitive information about the targets to ensure that all contractual restrictions adhere to the applicable privacy laws and regulations. 

To secure the transaction from potential risks, buy-side M&A initiates the due diligence process, vital for deal success​. 

Unlike time-consuming physical data rooms, virtual data rooms offer enhanced due diligence for M&A transactions by providing: 

• Full access control
• Detailed audit trails 
• Secure document management and exchange 
• Multi-factor authentication
• Individual user permissions
• Extended non-disclosure agreements (NDA) options.

Streamlining due diligence

Faster Q&A cycles

An effective due diligence data room for acquisitions ensures faster Q&A cycles. On average, M&A counterparts spend up to 70% of the deal time on Q&A. This figure alone demonstrates that Q&A is the most demanding aspect of the due diligence process. 

Bidders bombard sellers with multiple questions, further directed to the competent due diligence team member to draft an answer. Upon approval, the relevant bidder gets the answer.

Advanced search, filtering, and activity logs

Top data rooms provide advanced search capabilities to locate confidential documents and sensitive information efficiently. M&A parties opt for virtual deal platforms equipped with: 

• Powerful search functionality, including keyword search
• Advanced filtering options
• Optical character recognition (OCR) technology
• User activity logs.

Supporting regulatory compliance

Top-ranking due diligence data rooms for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) provide world-class navigation and regulatory compliance. 

M&A parties need a secure M&A platform to store and exchange sensitive data. Among the benefits offered, VDRs navigate regulatory compliance to ensure data privacy and protection.

The adherence to compliance measures ensures that M&A parties: 

• Operate according to the law 
• Foster trust amongst M&A stakeholders
• Boost corporate reputation
• Mitigate legal repercussions
• Safeguard their assets from misuse and data breaches.

Want to find the best data room provider for M&A deals?
Click Here

Key Features of the Best VDRs for M&A Deals

Role-based access & granular permissioning

Granular permissions in virtual data rooms allow for full control over role-based access. Granular permissioning enables virtual data room owners to control user access to sensitive documents and their further actions. 

Virtual data room providers set their granular permissions ranging from user to group management. 

Authorized users are entitled to individual access rights to certain documents and folders depending on their role in the M&A process. 

Best granular permissions practices: 

Logical groups to arrange user into groups depending on their roles and authorized access level.

Folder-level permissions to manage user access to shared files with ease

Permission reviews are conducted to ensure that user groups and individual users stick to granted permissions.

The least privilege principle is applied to grant the minimum level of access for each group to complete their tasks.

Granular permissions help interested parties manage access to shared documents and sensitive data. Arranging well-structured groups and setting permissions will provide authorized access to sensitive information within a virtual data room. 

Role-based access and granular permissioning are essential security measures to ensure safe collaboration and information sharing.

Watermarking

Watermarking allows M&A counterparts to protect sensitive documents with customized text overlays. The watermarking technique adds visible and invisible text layers or images to identify document origin, ownership, and confidentiality. 

Competitive virtual data rooms apply dynamic watermarking that alters depending on the viewer’s information. This way, M&A stakeholders protect their sensitive documents from unauthorized access.

Best watermarking practices: 

Dynamic variables like ‘email’ or ‘date’ to enable unique watermarks for individual viewers

Balanced visibility enables opacity to make the watermark visible without fading the contents.

Matching document type to enable the best-fit watermark style

Updating watermark settings to ensure other security measures.

Document tracking

Data rooms let admins track the documents viewed and detect user IP addresses. 

The data room software for M&A teams is most used to track multiple users within the virtual data room. The risk is that other interested parties may apply the same login credentials and view sensitive files. 

Integrated Q&A modules

Leading data rooms provide integrated Q&A modules.

Customized Q&A modules allow data room owners to set up the functionalities optimal for the complexity of a particular project, ranging from small transactions with few participants to complex business deals with extensive data volume and multiple buyers. 

In the latter case, VDR providers provide a multi-step approval process before publishing the answers.

Deal progress analytics & reporting

To simplify due diligence and compliance processes, renowned VDRs provide analytics dashboards for comprehensive reporting on document usage, tracking of user activities, and engagement.

Tracking user interactions at the page level indicates where M&A bidders spend most time, and which documents are the most important.

Granular page-by-page analytics enables detailed engagement insights and page views tracking

Advanced analytics dashboards deliver comprehensive reports on user activity, deal progress metrics, and document engagement.

To monitor deal progress and compliance, real-time reporting and analytics provide up-to-date insights into user activity and document engagement.

Multi-language and multi-timezone support for cross-border deals

Virtual data rooms have transformed cross-border business dealings. With multiple challenges under way varying from complex regulatory environments to maintaining smooth communication across time zones, VDRs allow for a more seamless and efficient process to ease international transactions. 

VDR benefits for cross-border transactions:

• Top-level security
• Improved collaboration across time zones
• Simplified regulatory compliance

VDRs play a decisive role in managing cross-border transactions to ensure a streamlined international deal-making process:

Document control and permissions enable access controls. VDR admins can grant or restrict access to document visibility and functionality based on individual user roles. This proves that only authorised users have access to sensitive information within a virtual data room M&A and reduces internal data leaks.

Multilingual and localisation support to disallow language barriers and any possible misunderstandings among the M&A parties. The support option leads to greater clarity and smoother collaboration among international teams.

Data analytics and reporting VDR tools provide valuable insights into user behaviour, their data room engagement, and interactions with documents. These insights help VDR admins identify potential areas of interest or concerns regarding particular transactions. In cross-border transactions with diverse stakeholder priorities, data analytics reveals critical insights to guide informed decision-making. 

With no best VDR for M&A deals, these VDR virtual data room vendors provide world-class M&A data room tools:

Real-world M&A use cases in Australia

Small business acquisitions

2024 featured consistent M&A activity with a promising outlook for 2025. The promising future for new acquisitions owes to new regulatory reforms and anticipated exemptions for small businesses. 

Individual acquisitions of smaller businesses indicate the ongoing consolidation and strategic growth within Australia’s small-to-medium enterprise sector.

Among the reported acquisitions across the small-sized business sector is a featured case of the First Focus Acquisition of Section Group. In November 2024. Australian Managed Service Provider (MSP) First Focus acquired Melbourne-based technology company Section Group to expand core services like digital marketing and website design.

Mid-market corporate sales

The Australian M&A landscape is increasingly drawing the gaze of international strategists. 

Newmont’s acquisition of Newcrest is a featured example, though the trend extends further. London-listed CVS Group’s calculated entry into the Australian veterinary sector, acquiring four clinics in key urban centers and establishing a dedicated local management structure to foster growth and pursue further acquisitions, underscores this point. International dealmakers invest in Australian markets for their growing capital allocation.

Private equity portfolio exits

Notwithstanding the slowdown of M&A deals in Australia, the overall deal value went up in 2024. The trend suggests that the exit transactions were predominantly of higher value. 

Selling to strategic corporate buyers and deal counts dominated the exits for private equity firms. Digital infrastructure, energy transition, and critical minerals drove the highest M&A activity with private equity exits.

Private equity portfolio exits marked the key focus for the companies that faced pressure to return capital. Hence, the mandatory merger clearance regime at the end of 2024 will substantially impact private equity exits in 2025 and beyond. 

Overall, Australian companies are considering the growing secondary market as a feasible alternative for liquidity and are optimistic about increased exit activity in 2025.

Cross-border M&A with foreign investment

Cross-border M&As with foreign investment in 2024 showcased several trends:

The total M&A deal volume slightly decreased compared to historical averages; nonetheless, the cross-border transactions involved high-value targets.

The most active were US acquirers, accounting for 65% by value of cross-border inbound transactions, followed by Japan, France, Singapore, and Germany.

With a stable political and regulatory environment, Australia remains an attractive investment destination for foreign dealmakers. The investment landscape appeals to North American and European corporations interested in Australian assets.

The focal sectors prioritized by foreign investors seeking innovative businesses included: 

Technology with promising growth in cross-border M&A activity

Energy and resources featuring strong performance in public and private M&As that involve foreign buyers

Healthcare proved as an ideal target for foreign investment in Australian M&A.

Digital infrastructure and critical minerals are promising for M&A foreign investment.

In 2024, the Australian government balanced foreign investment and national interests by prioritizing greater transparency and efficiency. 

The approval in the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) is a pivotal precondition for the successful completion of M&A deals involving foreign capital.

In 2025 and beyond, we anticipate more applications of virtual data room for M&A Australia. 

Data room for company acquisition:

• Safe information keeping
• Sensitive data protection 
• Time-efficiency
• Easy document access 
• Activity tracking
• Cost-effectiveness.

Top virtual data rooms for M&A in Australia (2025)

Here is our primary selection of the virtual data rooms for mergers and acquisitions in Australia: 

Read customer reviews to learn more about secure VDR for Australian acquisitions:

iDeals is internationally renowned for a secure, efficient, and user-friendly VDR environment tailored for complex M&A transactions. The comparative advantages range from robust security features, advanced due diligence tools, and collaboration and communication functionalities contributing to successful deal closures. Read more iDeals reviews →

Firmex is a secure, user-friendly, and efficient VDR solution to streamline M&A transactions. Intuitive document management capabilities, efficient due diligence, and comprehensive support allow for managing sensitive information during complex M&A deals. Read more Firmex reviews →

Datasite M&A strengths embrace a reliable and scalable platform with world-class security, AI-powered due diligence efficiency, comprehensive collaboration tools, and full support of the deal lifecycle. Datasite, designed to cope with complex and high-stakes transactions, is a top choice among investment banks, financial institutions, private equity companies, and law firms. Read more Datasite reviews →

ShareVault features robust granular security and user-friendly interface functionalities for efficient document management during M&A deals. The advanced due diligence tools and secure collaboration capabilities enable M&A parties to manage sensitive deal data. Read more ShareVault reviews →

How to Set Up an M&A Data Room (Simple Guide)

1. Define user roles

Protect all deal documents with diverse levels of user permissions. Deploy audit logs to track interactions within your data room.

2. Manage documents securely 

Organize due diligence files and core documents, including NDAs, financials, IP, legal papers and tax records in structured folders by category to ease navigation. 

Make sure all documents are accurate and up-to-date before uploading. 

Set permissions for authorized access levels with clear individual user roles to view or download sensitive information. 

Make sure your data room contains up-to-date information.

Leverage activity tracking within the deal room to watch for the most often viewed documents by the potential buyers.

3. Set permissions

Invite virtual data room users and set individual permissions in bulk to save time in M&A transactions involving multiple parties. 

Leverage AI-enhanced solutions to automate file categorization and tag multiple data types. 

Optical character recognition will notify you whether the data matching your search terms was added. 

Use integrated trackers to soothe the pre-diligence process. 

4. Launch Q&A for buyer requests

Most VDRs provide integrated Q&A modules to ensure effective communication between M&A parties. 

To ensure efficient collaboration, leverage Q&A functionalities to address multiple M&A buy-side queries in real time.

5. Monitor activity logs and close the deal
Data room setup for acquisitions assumes tracking and monitoring activities. 

Regularly monitor and audit VDR activities by utilizing activity logs and reporting features to see who accessed sensitive information and when.

Once the M&A transaction is complete, close your VDR and archive all the documents for the next deals, reference, and regulatory purposes.

FAQ Section