Privacy Policy

The Portal is made available by invitation to business owners and their authorized representatives. It is not directed to the general public or to children, and is intended for business, not consumer, use.

We collect the information you choose to provide and the information needed to operate the Portal:

• Account & contact information — your name, email address, and phone number, provided when you are invited and when you complete your profile.
• Business profile information — details you enter about your company and goals, such as industry, description, deal preferences, timeline, equity rollover expectations, and valuation range.
• Documents you upload — files you choose to share for due diligence, such as financial statements, tax returns, customer lists, employee rosters, and ownership/cap-table records.
• Financial data from QuickBooks Online — if you choose to connect your Intuit QuickBooks Online account, we access certain accounting data on a read-only basis (see Section 4).
• Usage & security information — limited technical logs (e.g., sign-in events and audit records) used to operate and secure the Portal.

We use the information solely to provide M&A advisory services to you, including to:

• build and organize your confidential business profile and due-diligence materials;
• analyze your financials to assess readiness and identify suitable partners;
• match you—only with your approval—with prospective acquirers, investors, or partners;
• communicate with you about your process; and
• operate, secure, and improve the Portal.

We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Connecting QuickBooks Online is optional. If you connect it, you authorize us through Intuit’s OAuth process to access certain accounting data from your company file on a read-onlybasis, such as your profit & loss, balance sheet, and company/account information.

• We use QuickBooks data onlyto populate and verify the financial portion of your business profile for your M&A process.
• We do not sell QuickBooks data, do not share it with any third party except as described in Section 5, and do not use it for any purpose unrelated to your engagement.
• QuickBooks data is stored using the same encryption and access controls as the rest of your data (see Section 6).
• You can disconnect QuickBooks at any time from the Documents page in the Portal, or from within your Intuit account. Disconnecting stops any further access; you may also request deletion of previously retrieved QuickBooks data (see Section 7).

Our use of information received from Intuit APIs adheres to applicable Intuit developer and data-use requirements.

We share information only in these limited circumstances:

• With your approval— with prospective acquirers, investors, or partners you approve, as part of your M&A process. Until you approve a disclosure, Cook M&A shares only anonymized, high-level information with prospective partners.
• Service providers — vendors that host and secure the Portal (e.g., cloud infrastructure providers) under confidentiality obligations, and only as needed to operate the service.
• Legal — where required by law or to protect rights, safety, and the integrity of the service.

We apply strong technical and organizational safeguards. Documents are encrypted at rest with per-business encryption keys, uploads are virus-scanned, access is restricted and isolated so your data is visible only to you and the Cook M&A team supporting your engagement, and account access requires multi-factor authentication. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we work to protect your information using industry-standard measures.

We retain your information for as long as your engagement is active and as needed for legitimate business and legal purposes. You may:

• review and update your profile at any time in the Portal;
• disconnect QuickBooks Online at any time; and
• request access to, correction of, or deletion of your information—including previously retrieved QuickBooks data—by contacting us at the address below. We will honor such requests subject to legal and contractual obligations.

We may update this Policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here and revise the effective date above. Material changes will be communicated to you.

Questions about this Policy or your information? Contact Cook M&A Advisors at info@cookma.com.