Case Study: Goldsmith Agio Helms
Private Investment Banking Firm Utilizes Intradyn’s Archiving Solution
Goldsmith Agio Helms, a preeminent private investment banking firm is based in the U.S. Through offices in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London, it operates internationally providing sophisticated financial advisory services to mid-market businesses. It is recognized as one of the country’s most accomplished sell-side mergers and acquisitions firms.
The firm has serviced and completed over 500 financial transactions ranging in size from a few million to several billion dollars with the majority of transactions were between the $25 million to $500 million range.
THE CHALLENGE
Christopher T. Ferski joined the firm more than two-years ago as its IT director. He soon realized several regulatory concerns needed to be addressed, including email archiving. The firm has a Microsoft Exchange Email System. Ferski decided to research email compliance issues further, including learning more about the SEC and NASD rules. “I essentially broke down each rule into what its effect was on us and took a look at our organization from an architecture and compliance perspective to figure out where we were compliant, where we weren’t, and what we needed to do,” Ferski says. As, Ferski researched, he became concerned with several issues:
• The hefty fines that were being levied by the SEC for noncompliance
• That the law stated that all email correspondence between customers and the securities industry must be kept for a minimum of seven years.
• The need for an archiving solution that could handle volumes of data for the long-term.
What many people may not realize; however, is that compliance regulations governing the financial industry don’t only require companies to retain all their data for seven-years but must be quickly retrievable when requested or face penalties for request delays. In fact, request for individual and specific emails must be retrievable in a manner that is immediate.
THE SOLUTION
“It turned out that Intradyn™ really created a light at the end of the tunnel for me…”
– Christopher T. Ferski
Ferski spent valuable time looking at available software and email systems to meet the firm’s SEC Email Retention Requirements. His original choice was a product that had been on the market for about a year and aimed at larger firms: Enterprise Vault from Symentec. Goldsmith Agio Helms purchased the system to meet two needs: SEC Email Archiving and long-term Email Storage Management.
Ferski knew the solution would be complicated and that the installation timeline was longer than he wished; but, there were currently no other suitable alternatives. Additionally, the Symentec solution required several modifications of Goldsmith’s IT infrastructure. Moreover, Symentec required that their engineers perform the installation for a significant fee.
About this time Ferski learned about Intradyn’s product: The Email Archiving Solution™. Ferski stated, “I was very excited, and anxious to get one in here. It turned out that Intradyn™ really created a light at the end of the tunnel for me, because I had found out there were virtually no solutions for email compliance specifically designed with small to mid-sized companies in mind – like us. Large enterprise solutions are readily available and impressive, but the cost of those systems is a major deterrent, and the minimum storage capacities are simply overkill.”
THE CONCLUSION
Goldsmith Agio Helm is now known as Lazard Middle Market LLC. Debbie Ryan is the new IT Director. She continued using the Intradyn solution after Christopher Ferski. She decided to upgrade to the new RazorSafe model in early 2012. Goldsmith Agio Helm (Lazard MM LLC) has been using Intradyn solutions for over 9 years and have find it a very releable, and efficient solution.
