IntraLinks went public at $13 a share and was bought, seven years later, for exactly $13 a share. In between, it ran the secure online rooms where bankers, lawyers and buyers read confidential documents during loans and mergers. Before IntraLinks, those papers moved by fax, courier and email, or sat in a physical data room. When IntraLinks filed to go public in 2010, it wanted to sell the same locked-down sharing to every kind of company.

From Loans to Mergers

IntraLinks was incorporated in Delaware in June 1996. At its founding it offered online collaboration for the debt capital markets, where banks share loan documents with lenders. Soon after, it moved into merger and acquisition deals, where its virtual data rooms let bidders review a company's files. In June 2007 a merger made IntraLinks part of a new holding company. It was based in New York City.

Thirteen Dollars, Both Ways

IntraLinks priced its IPO at $13 a share in August 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as IL. It sold 11 million shares and used much of the money to pay down debt. In December 2016 Synchronoss Technologies launched a tender offer to buy IntraLinks for $13 a share in cash. The deal closed in January 2017, and IntraLinks left the NYSE.

Cover: The Pier with Chains, plate 16 from Imaginary Prisons, Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for chains and a locked pier (a secure data room).