Mergers are a great thing, but they don't end with the closing. There's often years of work left to do after the closing, before everything is finally done. It's a job that usually doesn't make any sense for someone to do themselves.
You could get dragged into litigation. You could have shareholders that are unhappy with you. And even if none of that happens, you're going to possibly spend hours to dozens or hundreds of hours on work you really don't want to be doing.
There's an easy and smarter alternative, and that is to engage an outside shareholder representative. And if you look to SRS Acquiom, we've done tens of thousands of deals over the last 17 years. We've seen every issue that you can think of that's come up. We have a deep bench of attorneys and accountants and specialists in handling shareholder communications and release of proceeds and all the things that need to happen on these transactions. So there's really no need that anyone needs to take on this thankless job and take the personal risk.
Europe is a unique market. Europe has its own needs. It's not a carbon copy of the U.S., but many of the building components that we've worked out in the U.S. over time are the same ones that we need in Europe.
After 17 years of doing this in America, we've set the standard that it really doesn't make any sense to serve as a volunteer shareholder representative. It's just not the way deals are done here anymore. We're now thrilled to be able to do the same in Europe with the team on the ground.