The Confidential Information Memorandum Attack Plan: If you are coming from an investment banking background, you are all too familiar with a Confidential Information Memorandum or CIM (aka Offering Memorandum, Confidential Information Presentation). For a sell-side engagement, where an investment bank is hired to represent a company for sale, the CIM is the primary document used by potential bidders to develop an initial valuation range at which they would be interested in pursuing the investment opportunity outlined in the CIM.

This document is a written high-level introduction to a business that is “coming to market.” Though there are certainly exceptions, CIMs typically range in length from 50 to 100 pages and are distributed to potential buyers several weeks or months in advance of an indication of interest (IOI) submission deadline.