THE three-day services outage for millions of Blackberry smartphone users earlier this month highlighted how integral such devices have become in the corporate finance community.

New technology has transformed the negotiation and completion processes in corporate finance deals.

Technology has compressed time and created new expectations on transaction speed. Quick turnaround on communication and documents is now expected where time zones and out of office hours do not effect the speed of the response.

The due diligence stage of corporate finance deals has seen dramatic changes, with virtual data rooms replacing the traditional paper-based data rooms. Documents can now be accessed regardless of location, reducing costs and timescales.

Even completion can be finalised remotely, with the ability to scan documents to all parties.

But when a deal is approaching a conclusion, email can be overused – particularly by copying in a large number of people, creating long, rolling conversations on issues.

On some deals it is not unusual to be sent or copied into 300+ emails in a 24-hour period.

Despite the volume, each email needs to be read to avoid the risk of something being missed.

The danger of the volume of email flying around prior to a deal was highlighted in a recent court case.

A buyer was allowed to rescind a contract to buy shares after the CEO of the target company failed to disclose an email he received to his Blackberry (apparently unread) prior to completion. This gave him formal notice that one of the subsidiary’s main customers would be switching to another supplier.

Also, most people view emails as a quick, informal message or a rolling conversation and can sometimes be fairly lax in terms of what they say or how they say something.

However, an email could potentially bind someone in the same way as a formal letter.

Technology certainly makes doing deals much easier. However, we shouldn’t become too reliant and should think when using it.

We need to remember to use “traditional” methods of communication as well. It’s good to talk and often much more constructive!

:: Craig Swinhoe is a partner in the Muckle LLP corporate finance team