Privacy Policy

Introduction

This is the privacy policy of MergerLinks Limited based in 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7GU, company number 09414606 ("MergerLinks", "we", "us", "our").This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, obtain from our research and other business activities or that you provide to us, will be processed. MergerLinks is part of Datasite LLC and its affiliates (“Datasite”). Please read the following notice carefully to understand our practices and treatment regarding your personal data. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under number ZA335321. In order to verify whether you are entitled to access and use certain materials, content and services available from our website, information that you provide to us when conducting research or to enable us to enhance your user experience, we may ask you to provide certain personal data.

Information we may collect from you

We may collect and process the following types of information about you:

Names, gender, job titles, photo, function, qualifications, career, education, email, telephone number, physical address;
Details of transactions you conduct through our website or you provide to us;
Details of your visits to our website (including, amongst others, traffic data, location data, website logs and resources that you access);
Details of your interactions with emails and other notifications we share with you (including, amongst others, customized links or similar technologies to determine whether our communications have been received and/or opened).

We collect the personal information from the following sources:

Through our independent research into professional advisers to business clients;
When asked to provide goods or services;
By users searching/browsing our website;
By individuals registering for or attending our events;
Subscribers to our newsletters;
conducting independent research interviews and surveys
You providing information about your role, function, title, experience, deals, transactions, clients or relationships
Publicly available resources such as websites, business press

Should you decide to use your LinkedIn account credentials when registering to MergerLinks you consent that we may collect and process the following information that relate to your LinkedIn Profile Data:

Your name and photo;
Your primary email address associated with your LinkedIn account;
Your company name and logo
Post, comment or like posts on your behalf;
Use your basic profile including your name, photo, headline, and current positions.

IP addresses

We may collect certain information that your browser or mobile device sends to every website you visit, such as your IP address, operating system, geographic location, browser type and language, access times and referring website addresses. This information is collected for system administration and to report aggregate information to our external partners (e.g. advertisers).

Cookies

Our website contains cookies and other tracking mechanisms to store your preferences and other information on your computer, which allows us to efficiently customize your user experience. You have the ability to accept or decline cookies by changing settings of your browser. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to use some features of our website that depend on cookies.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (EEA). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the (EEA), who work for us, our affiliates or for one of our suppliers. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country, and in some cases, may not provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.

We have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal data will remain protected in accordance with applicable law for such processing or transfer. These safeguards include implementing the Information Commissioner's standard contractual clauses for transfers of personal data between us and our affiliates and third-party service providers to whom we transfer your personal data which require these companies to protect Personal Data they process from the EEA or Switzerland in accordance with applicable law.

By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Uses made of that information

We collect and use your personal information for the purposes set out below or as stated at the point we collect it from you including to:

review and organise personal information relating to individual professional services providers;
interview professional advisers in order to provide an accurate assessment of the professional services market;
rank professionals and their firms or organisations based on criteria as determined by us;
prepare league tables of professionals and their firms or organisations based on criteria as determined by us;
contact professionals advisers we have ranked or researched and explore marketing opportunities or services we think may be of interest to them;
conduct activities by our researchers and analysts for our research, website and other publications;
contact firms, organisations or other professionals advisers to follow up any submissions made to us;
promote, manage and administer our research and business activities;
deal with requests or enquiries we receive from individuals or organisations;
analyze trends, diagnose and troubleshoot issues;
track visitor traffic and interest;
operate and improve the website;
deliver services or carry out the transactions you have requested;
allow you to participate in interactive features of our service;
ensure that content from our website is tailored to your viewing device;
send you a newsletter;
operate, administer, and maintain our systems;
conduct research and development including the development of new services;
link or combine with the other personal information we get from third parties
report on aggregate information about our users' browsing actions and patterns to our external partners;
notify you about changes to our service. We may also collect public and non-public information from you or third parties and combine it with information collected at the Website;
for any other purpose in relation to an individual making contact with us

Disclosure of your information

We may disclose your personal information to Datasite or any member of our group . We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

when requested by you;
the purpose(s) for which the personal information has been submitted to us;
the purposes listed above under the 'Uses made of Personal Information' section above;
for customer service and account management;
IT service providers for storage/hosting, support, chatbox that creates AI generated responses
to supplement, update, or correct the data or provide additional publicly available data;
to manage mailings on our behalf;
to perform customer surveys and marketing events;
to assist with direct marketing efforts;
when required to facilitate our events which are hosted by a third party;
to technical support or professional support providers;
in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
if we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers may be transferred as an asset;
if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our Terms and Conditions and other agreements or to protect the operation of our website, or the rights, property, or safety of us, our customers, or others.
We may also use your data, or permit selected third parties to use your data, to provide you with information about goods and services that may be of interest to you, and they or we may contact you about these by post or telephone. If you do not want us to use your data in this way, or to pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes, please tick the relevant box situated on the form on which we collect your data.
to prevent fraud, money laundering, undertake credit checks, comply with laws and check with identity verification agencies;
to law enforcement and other third parties, as required by and/or in accordance with applicable law or regulation

Legal Grounds for Processing

We rely on one or more of the following processing conditions:

to perform our contractual obligations; and/or
to satisfy any legal and regulatory obligations to which we are subject; and/or
to satisfy our legitimate interests in the effective delivery of information and services and in the effective and lawful operation of our businesses; and/or
when we have consent to process personal information.

Where we rely on our legitimate interest, we will balance that against our applicable legal obligations to you. We will not collect additional categories of personal data or use the personal data we collected for materially different, unrelated, or incompatible purposes without providing you notice.

If we request your consent to use your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent any time in the manner indicated when we requested the consent or by contacting us. If you have consented to receive marketing communications from our third-party partners, you may withdraw your consent by contacting those partners directly.

Sensitive Personal Data

We do not collect sensitive personal data. Unless we specifically make a request and it is relevant to the services that we provide, we ask that you do not provide us with any sensitive personal data (meaning information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic, health, or biometric information, information about sex life or sexual orientation, or criminal convictions or offences) through our websites or when we contact you.

Information collected by automated means

We may also use technology to collect information indirectly about the use of our Website that may reveal your identity. Our HTML-enabled emails and website may contains hyperlinks to other pages on our website. We may use technology to track how often these emails are accessed, links are used and which pages on our website our visitors choose to view. In addition with regard to our services, we will also will maintain a history of your access, and certain actions taken by you while accessing the services (e.g. access to website, including time, date and length of access) will include maintaining a log of users' IP addresses, the websites from which users access the services. This type of information may also be collected when you read our HTML-enabled emails.

We do not use your personal information for automated decision making or profiling.

Automated decision making

You have the right not to be subject to automated decision making (e.g., profiling) that significantly affects you. The exercise of this right is not available to you in the following cases:

The automated decision is required to enter into, or perform, a contract with you;
We have your explicit consent to make such a decision;
The automated decision is authorised by applicable law

Unless the automated decision is authorized by applicable law, you still have the right to obtain human intervention in respect of the decision, to express your point of view and to contest the decision.

Retention

We retain personal data we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate interest to do so. When personal data is no longer necessary or relevant for the stated purpose or to fulfil a legal or business requirement, it shall be securely destroyed.

Marketing

Where we are legally required to obtain consent to provide marketing materials, we will only provide such marketing materials if we have been provided with consent for us to do so.

You can object to receive direct marketing from us at any time, by contacting us. Any emails or other electronic communications that we send for direct marketing purposes will also have an 'unsubscribe' facility. However, we may retain information sufficient to identify individuals so that we can honour their request.

Security

We will maintain, monitor, and enforce reasonable organizational, administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect the security and confidentiality of your personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorized access or disclosure. We limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

Datasite maintains compliance with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (and the UK Extension), and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and has certified to the Department of Commerce that it adheres to each Framework's Principles regarding the collection, use and retention of Personal Data as well as the notice, choice, security, data integrity, access and enforcement requirements from European Union member countries, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. If there is any conflict between the terms in this Privacy Policy and the Principles, the Principles shall govern. For a listing of U.S. organizations that have self-certified to the Department of Commerce and declared their commitment to adhere to the Principles, visit https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/.

Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data. Limitations may apply in certain circumstances:

The right to be informed.
The right to object to the processing of your personal data.
The right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority.
Rights in relation to automatic decision making and profiling.
The right to access information, which we hold about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with Data Protection Legislation, and you can contact us at our registered address as given above. Any access request may be subject to a fee to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
The right of rectification to ensure that we hold correct and up to date information. If you believe that any information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, please contact us at our registered address. We may need to ask you for further information and identification to help us to comply with this request.
The right to request that your personal information is erased (subject to certain limitations).
The right to restrict the processing of your personal data (subject to certain limitations).
The right to data portability (subject to certain limitations). We may provide you the ability to view or edit your personal information online. In order to help prevent your personal information from being viewed by others, you will be required to sign in with your credentials (username and password)

Exercising Rights

To exercise the access and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable request to the contact email below. You may only make a request related to your personal data. We endeavour to respond to a verifiable request within thirty (30) days of its receipt, which may be extended with written notification, and deliver our response (or reasons we cannot comply with a request) via electronic mail. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights. We may make a charge, if excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded.

Links

Our website contains links to other websites operated by third parties. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or policies of such third party websites and this Policy does not apply to those websites. We recommend that you review the privacy policy at each website to determine how that site protects your privacy

Changes to our privacy policy

Any amendments we may make to our privacy policy will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

Contact

If you have questions or comments regarding this privacy policy please email us at contact@mergerlinks.com.