VIP Review: Bureau van Dijk's Zephyr
Jinfo Blog

By Anne Jordan

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With a number of industry experts currently predicting a rise in M&A deals, it’s an appropriate time to look at Zephyr (http://www.zephyr.bvdep.com), a database of deal information covering M&A, IPO, private equity and venture capital deals, and containing information on rumours as well as announced and completed deals.

The July issue of VIP Magazine (No. 80) includes a review of Zephyr, produced by Zephus Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (http://www.bvdinfo.com). The product has been undergoing a total upgrade with the new Zephyr launched at the end of June. VIP’s review looks at the new Zephyr, which has a Wizard for guiding non-experts, and a new design to streamline the interface with other Bureau van Dijk products.

However, for me the key to any product is the source information, as no amount of interface wizardry will work without the required content, and this is one of the strengths of Zephyr. It has a rigorous data collection and research process with its researchers speaking a total of 31 languages. Based in Manchester in the UK, and in Singapore, in Asia, they use multilingual sources to research deals, translating reports into English.

Every day, global stock exchanges are monitored for news about deals. Automatic searches in multiple languages are undertaken on an hourly basis on Factiva and Moreover, pushing out results to the research teams who then look for primary information from company websites and other sources to validate and expand on the initial news item.

The new Zephyr also ticks the boxes with its search interface. There are various options for non-experts, with a word search, pre-defined common searches, and a simple fill-out box screen. Zephyr Advanced offers more sophisticated searching with 300 search criteria allowing a great deal of flexibility in building a search string.

The review found some points worth highlighting regarding the Geography searching. As well as country and regional searching, it has pre-defined political groupings, such as the OECD and GCC. Having undertaken a large recent project on the GCC, I found it useful to have this area listed as a pre-defined search group. Other interesting points regarding Geography searching can be read in the review.

Purchase the VIP Report: Product Review of Zephyr from the FreePint Shop. Or save money by purchasing VIP Magazine No.80, which includes the VIP Report: Product Review of Alacra Compliance.

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