Business description of Donnelley-Financial-Solutions-Inc from last 10-k form

PART I

Company Overview

Donnelley Financial Solutions, Inc. (“Donnelley Financial,” or the “Company”) is a financial communications services company that supports global capital markets compliance and transaction needs for its corporate clients and their advisors (such as law firms and investment bankers) and global investment management compliance and analytics needs for mutual fund companies, variable annuity providers and broker/dealers. The Company provides content management, multi-channel content distribution, data management and analytics services, collaborative workflow and business reporting tools, and translations and other language services in support of its clients’ communications requirements. The Company operates in two business segments:

The Company reports certain unallocated selling, general and administrative activities and associated expenses within “Corporate”, including, in part, executive, legal, finance, marketing and certain facility costs. In addition, certain costs and earnings of employee benefit plans, such as pension income and share-based compensation, are included in Corporate and are not allocated to the reportable segments. Prior to the Separation (as defined below), many of these costs were based on allocations from RR Donnelley & Sons Company (“RRD”); however, beginning October 1, 2016, the Company incurs such costs directly.

For the Company’s financial results and the presentation of certain other financial information by segment, see Note 18, Segment Information, to the Consolidated and Combined Financial Statements. For financial information by geographic area, including net sales and long-lived assets, see Note 19, Geographic Area and Products and Services Information, to the Consolidated and Combined Financial Statements.

Client Services 

The Company’s business is diversified across a range of products and services that enable it to work with companies and their advisors at different points throughout the business lifecycle, including private companies, public companies and companies that have filed for bankruptcy. The Company’s clientele is primarily focused in three areas: capital markets, investment markets, and language solutions, and the Company also provides clients with Data and Analytics services and products. The Company services clients in each of these areas with distinct, proprietary solutions tailored to meet their varying regulatory, transactional and communications needs and are able to achieve operational leverage through the use of common technology and service platforms. 

Global Capital Markets 

The Company’s global capital markets (“GCM”) clients consist mainly of companies that are subject to the filing and reporting requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) and the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). In 2016, approximately 40% of GCM net sales were compliance in nature. The Company also supports public and private companies throughout the mergers and acquisitions transaction process and in public and private capital markets transactions with deal management solutions focused on aiding transactional efficiency from inception to completion. In 2016, approximately 50% of GCM net sales were transactional in nature and approximately 10% of GCM net sales were related to Venue data room services. The Company provides a comprehensive suite of products and services to help its GCM clients comply with disclosure obligations, create, manage and deliver accurate and timely financial communications and manage public and private transaction processes. The Company also provides GCM clients with data and analytics services focused on uncovering intelligence from financial disclosures and offering distribution of company data and public filings. 

Many of the Company’s GCM clients are companies required by the SEC to file reports pursuant to the Exchange Act, through the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. The EDGAR system requires filers to prepare and submit filings using the SEC’s specified file formats. The Company’s EDGAR filing services assist its GCM clients in preparing Exchange Act filings that are compatible with the EDGAR system, and its employees have expertise and significant experience navigating this process with companies and their advisors. Specifically, many of the Company’s GCM clients are required to file proxy statements pursuant to the Exchange Act, and the Company’s Proxy Design service allows its clients to tailor these proxies by helping them to identify and match an appropriate style and format to their unique corporate culture and proxy-related objectives. The Company serves its GCM clients from local offices in most major cities in the U.S. and international jurisdictions in which the Company has operations. The Company believes that its local teams set the standard for reliable and efficient service and convenience. 

As part of their regulatory filing requirements, the Company’s GCM clients who submit Exchange Act reports are also required to submit tagged files in the SEC-mandated eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) format. The Company provides these clients with a suite of tagging, review and validation tools to assist them with the XBRL requirements, and the Company has teams of accounting and financing professionals that assist its GCM clients with the processes of tag selection, tag review, file creation, validation and distribution, if required for their Exchange Act filings with the SEC. 

In addition to the EDGAR filing services it provides, in which it formats and manages the content of the filings on behalf of its clients, the Company also offers a cloud-based disclosure management system called ActiveDisclosure that allows its GCM clients to collaboratively create, review and distribute financial communication and regulatory compliance documents on their own systems and then file directly on the SEC’s EDGAR system and File 16 for Section 16 filings, each of which, with assistance from the Company’s experienced professionals as needed, may reduce the time of the financial close process for its clients. 

The Company provides services for GCM clients throughout the course of public and private business transactions, including those transactions that are subject to the requirements of the Securities Act. The Company assists many of its clients with certain transaction-related EDGAR filing and print services (including registration statements, prospectuses, offering circulars, proxy statements and XBRL-tagged filings), as well as with the technical aspects of the regulatory filing process. The Company has conferencing facilities in most major cities in the U.S. and the international jurisdictions in which it has operations for in-person working groups to meet to strategize and prepare documents for the transactional deal stream. The Company’s sites are outfitted to provide EDGAR filing capabilities, typesetting, meeting rooms and around-the-clock service. 

In addition, for both public and private transactions, many of the Company’s GCM clients use its line of Venue products and services to manage the transaction process and increase efficiency. The Company’s Venue Virtual Data Room product is a cloud-based service that allows companies to securely organize, manage, distribute and track corporate governance, financing, legal and other documents in an online workspace accessible to internal and outside advisors alike. The Company’s GCM clients use Venue Virtual Data Rooms for capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisition transactions and other transactions to facilitate their document management and due diligence processes. 

Venue Deal Marketing is a service provided through Peloton Documents, a company in which the Company has made a strategic investment. The Peloton solution creates interactive transaction related documents that enable companies, investors and advisors to communicate a company’s value and market and manage large, complex deals directly from their data room. Peloton’s technology leverages video and other rich media content as the vehicle to illustrate the value of a business by enabling the user to tell a more dynamic company story to better gauge interest from potential buyers and investors. Users include some of the world’s largest investment banks and private equity firms. 

Global Investment Markets 

The Company provides products and services to clients operating in global investment markets (“GIM”) within the United States and internationally, including United States based mutual funds, hedge and alternative investment funds, insurance companies and overseas investment structures for collective investments (similar to mutual funds in the United States). The Company also provides products to third party service providers and custodians who support investment managers, and it sells products and distribution services to the broker networks and financial advisors that distribute and sell investment products. The Company services the top variable annuity and variable life providers and many funds use the Company’s software products to create reports, prospectuses, fact sheets and other marketing and disclosure documents for distribution or submission to investors and regulators. In 2016, approximately 97% of GIM net sales were compliance in nature, while the remaining 3% of GIM net sales were transactional in nature. Of the Company’s total GIM net sales in 2016, approximately 60% were derived from clients in the mutual funds industry and 40% were derived from clients in the healthcare and insurance industries. The Company’s teams currently support clients in the United States, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, India and Australia, with the Company’s average relationship with GIM clients exceeding 12 years. 

The Company offers its GIM clients a comprehensive set of products and services, including the FundSuiteArc software platform. FundSuiteArc is a suite of online content management products, which enable the Company’s GIM clients to store and manage information in a self-service, central repository so that compliance and regulatory documents can be easily edited, assembled, accessed, translated, rendered, and submitted to regulators. 

In the United States, mutual funds, variable annuity products, and qualifying institutional hedge funds are required by the SEC to file registration forms and subsequent ongoing disclosures as well as XBRL-formatted filings pursuant to the 1940 Act, through the SEC’s EDGAR system. Using its filing capabilities, the Company works with many of its GIM clients to prepare and submit these 1940 Act and XBRL filings using the SEC’s specified file formats. 

Changes in how investors consume information have led to new ways for investors to receive disclosure documents. GIM offers various technology and electronic delivery products and services to make the distribution of documents and content more efficient. Through an investment in and an agreement with Mediant, the Company provides a suite of software to brokers and financial advisors which enable them to monitor and view shareholder communications and support the distribution and tabulation of corporate elections for shareholders. 

Language Solutions 

The Company supports domestic and international businesses in a variety of industries by helping them adapt their business content into different languages for specific countries, markets and regions through a complete suite of language products and services. The Company’s suite of services includes translation, editing, interpreting, proof-reading and multilingual typesetting, plus specialized content services such as transcreation (cultural adaptation of marketing materials), copywriting, linguistic validation by subject matter experts (specifically in the medical sector), transcription, voice-over, subtitling, and localization (website software adaptation for a specific market). The Company also provides application testing and quality assurance, which enable consistent performance of web, desktop and mobile applications, as well as cultural consulting services, helping corporations with their cross-cultural communications. The Company generally provides its suite of services to clients through project-by-project or preferred vendor arrangements, with the majority of its net sales from language solutions derived from the Company’s International segment. The Company provides its language solutions offerings to clients operating in a variety of industries, with language solutions 2016 net sales derived from clients in the financial, corporate, life sciences and legal industries, among others. 

The Company engages as independent contractors a network of over 5,000 accredited, in-country linguists to support its clients in over 140 languages and provide a 24/7/365 service delivery platform to assist its clients at all times, enabling a shorter time-to-market. The Company’s language solutions services are supported by its innovative language technology, including a market leading proprietary Translation Management System (MultiTrans) with terminology management and translation memory features. This state-of-the-art system stores terminology preferences and reduces costs by using previously-translated content. In addition, the Company offers a website translation service which is a cloud-based platform that enables dynamic website translation. The Company also continually drives innovation with new technologies, such as machine translation, to generate translations at the click of a button, post-machine translation editing to improve the quality of computer-generated translations, and voice recognition to gain efficiencies in audio-to-text solutions.