Press release

3 Dec 2020 London, GB

EY platform hosted on IBM Cloud and using IBM Watson Discovery to reframe the future of M&A due diligence

LONDON, 3 December 2020 EY announces the launch of EY Diligence Edge, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform hosted on IBM Cloud and supported by IBM Watson Discovery, designed to revolutionize the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) due diligence process.

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Konstantinos Makrygiannis

EY Global Consulting and Strategy and Transactions Media Relations and Social Media Associate Director

Media relations and social media professional. Can talk about planes, traveling and politics for hours on end. Aspiring jockey.

  • EY Diligence Edge helps dealmakers identify risks and opportunities faster through deeper insights across the transaction’s life cycle 
  • Leverages mergers and acquisitions (M&A)-specific, AI model supported by IBM Watson Discovery to enhance the virtual data room experience

EY announces the launch of EY Diligence Edge, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform hosted on IBM Cloud and supported by IBM Watson Discovery, designed to revolutionize the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) due diligence process.   

Surfacing insights centered around diligence topics, rather than in a traditional file structure, EY Diligence Edge ingests thousands of data room documents that outline finance, tax, operations and IT information. Using IBM Watson Discovery, the platform then searches these documents using a custom natural language processing (NLP) model trained on EY proprietary M&A insights. This helps dealmakers identify and leverage valuable insights throughout the transaction’s life cycle, as well as make informed decisions on deal value opportunities and gain an advantage in competitive deal processes. 

The platform also provides an outside-in view of a target company and its competitors by consolidating and analyzing at speed a range of external information, including news, financial and social media data. As a result, transaction professionals can spend less time searching for insights and more time analyzing their findings through the transaction’s lens.   

By bringing together real-time and historical data, the AI-supported tool unlocks strategic insights at the click of a button. This allows executives to better understand the impact on valuations of risks such as litigation, cyber-related issues, product recalls or regulatory breaches, thereby helping them to make more informed decisions. The flexibility and resiliency of IBM public cloud is designed to help ensure that EY’s professionals have end-to-end encrypted access to EY Diligence Edge anytime.

Tony Qui, EY Global Strategy and Transactions, Chief Innovation Officer, says:

“The launch of EY Diligence Edge using IBM Watson Discovery is a game-changer for M&A due diligence. In a fast-changing world, businesses need data and advice that will help them see a complete picture of the risks and opportunities to maximize value in a transaction. It is a key component of the EY Connected Capital Technologies suite of tools – fueled by data, powered by technology and driven by people to help deliver actionable insights at a faster pace and deeper level than ever before.”

Daniel Hernandez, General Manager of Data and AI, IBM, says:

"Our experience working with thousands of companies of different sizes and from different industries has taught us that language, automation and trust are three critical ingredients that can determine the success of AI in business by helping people understand nuanced viewpoints, discover and surface critical insights, and improve decision-making. EY is using IBM Watson to train its AI models on the complex language of M&A, automate time consuming manual processes and ultimately build trusted information to help practitioners unlock new value for clients."

In July 2020, EY and IBM expanded their global alliance, through which EY professionals are able to access the IBM hybrid cloud ecosystem and help organizations to accelerate their digital transformation ambitions. The initiative supports global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients manage and modernize workloads with Red Hat OpenShift for any cloud environment, including the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud’s security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies are designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

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Notes to Editors

About EY   

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, strategy and transactions and consulting services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation is available via ey.com/privacy. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

This news release has been issued by EYGM Limited, a member of the global EY organization that also does not provide any services to clients.

About IBM Cloud

IBM public cloud is powered by the same industry-leading confidential computing security found in IBM Z. Delivered via IBM Hyper Protect Services, it features “Keep Your Own Key” encryption capabilities backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available, making the IBM public cloud the industry's most secure and open public cloud for business.