What it does
Dossier turns any PE firm or company in Mergr into a **press-cited M&A narrative** — a structured, readable profile composed from the entity's full press release corpus. Search a name, click Generate, and 20 seconds later you have a written briefing covering deal history, strategy themes, notable transactions, and recent activity, with inline citations linking back to the exact press releases that justify each claim.
Two coverage stats sit above the narrative — Total Deals (with the date range) and Mergr Press Coverage (count of deals with full press releases, the % of total, and the date range of available press). These tell you up front how much raw material the narrative is drawing on, which is the best honest read on how deep or thin the profile will be.
Where to access it
When to use it
Pre-meeting briefings. 60 seconds of reading replaces an hour of Googling before a sponsor or strategic call.
Pitch prep on a target sponsor. Get a structured read on a firm's deal cadence, sector concentration, exit patterns, and notable deals — useful for tailoring outreach.
CIM and teaser inputs. Paste sections of the narrative directly into a memo or IC deck (subject to your own editorial review).
Competitive intelligence. Understand a competing sponsor's playbook from how they describe their own transactions in press.
Sourcing context. When a name surfaces in Buyer Match, Prospector, or Roll-Up Tracker, jump into Dossier to read the back-story before deciding whether to act on it.
Client-ready PDFs. Print/save-as-PDF produces a clean, sourced document — good for sharing with portfolio CEOs, LPs, or co-investors.
How to use it
1. Search a firm or company from the Mergr database.
Type a name into the search box. The autocomplete is unified across PE firms and companies — results show a colored tag in each row. Pick a match. The entity card and coverage stats load immediately.
2. Generate the narrative
When the chosen company or PE firm loads, you will see the total press releases and deals that we have for the entity inside the Mergr database. This content powers the narrative.
Click Generate M&A Narrative.
It may take 20+ seconds for the narrative to generate, once complet the page will load with the write-up.
3. View the narrative. Note the citations from press releases.
Inline `[N]` markers in the narrative are clickable. Clicking one opens the source press release in a modal — the full body (where stored), with the deal date, target name, and a link to the original wire-services.
Below the narrative, a SOURCES — PRESS RELEASES panel lists every cited source in order: number, date, subject.
Clicking a source row scrolls the narrative to where it's cited and highlights the matching paragraph.
5. Print or save as PDF
The Print / save as PDF link at the bottom-right of the narrative opens the browser print dialog with a print-optimized stylesheet (sources block kept inline, narrative body widened, branding footer). Save to PDF for sharing with clients or filing into deal folders.
Tips
Read coverage stats before clicking Generate.** A firm with 200 total deals but only 8 with press coverage will produce a thin narrative — useful to know up front. Press coverage % is the best leading indicator of narrative quality.
Use Dossier as a hub. When something interesting surfaces in any other tool — Buyer Match, Prospector, Roll-Up Tracker, Ownership Graph — search the entity in Dossier to get the qualitative context behind the structured data.
Print to PDF for client-ready briefings. The print stylesheet is designed for this — sources stay inline, narrative is widened, footer credits Mergr. Good enough to attach to an email.
Click a source row to verify a claim. If anything in the narrative reads as overstated, the source panel is one click from the underlying press release. Don't trust unsourced sentences in a narrative — the citations exist for a reason.
Pair Dossier (narrative) with Lineage (talent) for firm diligence. Dossier covers what they've done; Lineage covers who they are.