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Press Mentions
MergerNetwork has been mentioned in numerous magazines, newspapers, books, and news broadcasts. Here is just a sample.
CFO Magazine
Eric Furlow, a telecommunications company broker in Gulf Breeze, Fla., generated sales of three companies in 1999 through MergerNetwork.com, one a $35 million deal. 'I know almost everybody in the paging business,' says Furlow. 'MergerNetwork.com enables me to contact buyers outside of the industry.' Furlow compares the Web site to the Multiple Listing Service for real estate brokers, calling it 'the MLS for businesses.'
Boston Globe
Reprints with Permission
Frank Wyman, chairman of Boston M&A firm O'Conor Wright Wyman, also uses the Internet heavily. His company helps buyers find companies to purchase, and it helps sellers prepare their sales folders. Both buying and selling a company require a lot of research, and the Internet helps him get information more quickly. 'We've had great success with MergerNetwork.com,' Wyman said. 'It has experience with larger companies, which is important.' Wyman's firm handles companies with sales of $5 million or more.
CIO Magazine
If you're in the market for a business, MergerNetwork can hook you up with nearly any kind of company, located anywhere in the world, pulling in any kind of sales volume. How about a Portland, Ore., pet-care center that takes in less than $1 million a year? ... Maybe a South Korean paint manufacturer with sales between $10 million and $25 million? Or a $100 million-plus construction company located in the Midwest?
Net Market Makers
A second customer going into Sears doesn't add any extra value to the first customer who goes into the store. For an infomediary [like Mergernetwork], the valuable information transmitted back and forth between those two customers and from the market maker makes the "store" more valuable to all parties, and gives them more and more reason to come back.
Crain's Chicago Business
The advent of the Internet also has simplified searching for small businesses to buy: several Web sites offer a classified ad-type approach to finding a variety of businesses, [including Mergernetwork.com].
Banker & Tradesman
[Robert] Brauns, [one of the 125 people chosen as Leaders Making a Difference] founded Cambridge based [MergerNetwork], a leading market for buyers and sellers of businesses on the Internet. [MergerNetwork] is helping to take the business brokerage business a technological step further by making it easier for buyers to find sellers, and vice versa. Business brokers who use the service say it now often takes them only two months to sell a business versus six months before. Even the Wall Street Journal has sat up and taken notice, recently featuring the company on its front page.
Small Business Strategies
...[Carol] Berry envisions a primrose path for other local brokers who utilize the Internet to buy and sell companies. Although Mergernetwork's current inventory accounts for barely one percent of the estimated 400,000 companies for sale in the U.S. each year, some members believe there's no turning back. 'This is the way business is going to be done,' Berry says.'
Business 2.0
The actual mergers and acquisition processes are broken down into friendly explanations by professional advisors, reached directly through the site, making Mergernetwork a one-stop resource for budding takeover targets... The first financial portal of its kind... it won't put Wall Street out of business, but in the long run, it could give the fat cats a run for their money.
Fortune Magazine, Online Edition
In its short life, the Web has proven itself as a matchmaker supreme. Romantics hook up in chat rooms, job seekers trade E-mail with employers via career sites, and now Web-style wheeling and dealing extends to small-business mergers and acquisitions... Mergernetwork.com wins our mother-lode award for the most listings... If you don't find the perfect business, you can give your criteria to the site's bot, a special software program that combs through new listings and sends you an E-mail alert when likely candidates show up. Similar search and agent services exist for business sellers.
On the Edge (CNBC)
Ken Hanau of the large M&A firm Weiss, Peck and Greer believes that Internet M&A is here to stay, at least at the small business level. In fact, he checks it himself. But small isn't where Brauns plans to stay... Accounting for just one percent of companies sold each year, Brauns has a way to go. But with 5500 listings and 2500 buyers, there are more Conologs every day. It found the company it was looking for and is now looking for more. A corporate marriage made in heaven.
ACG Network
ACG members are excited that fellow member Bob Brauns, president of Marketplace Technologies - the best resource on the net for buying and selling businesses - now offers ACG members a free month-long subscription... It may be well worth a try. Marketplace Technologies' subsidiary company, Mergernetwork.com, has caught the eye of the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, which covered the on-line business recently in dramatic tones.
Wall Street Journal
...Members of Mergernetwork say the service is already changing the game: making the market more liquid and international by increasing the number of people who see each deal...
Wall Street Journal
Marketplace Technologies, Inc., Cambridge, Mass., says its three-year-old site (www.mergernetwork.com) contains about 5000 leads to businesses for sale. About 1500 subscribers pay for access to the site, which helps potential buyers find suitable targets. Dean Sena, a Miami business broker, attributes four recent sales, totaling nearly $30 million, to his use of the site. 'It used to take me six months to sell a business, but now it's taking about 60 days,' he says.
Net Profit
Apart from giving access to large markets the site has two main attractions. 'It saves time because people can search by criteria such as country, sector, or company,' says Mr. Brauns. 'More importantly, because the listings are only hours old, clients can move quickly and preempt others. With print listings, you often have to give details 30 days in advance - which means that they are often one-and-a-half months old by the time people see them.'
