The restructuring data room for Chapter 11, 363 sales and lender workouts
Run the sale process with a walled group and private question team per bidder, give lenders and the creditors' committee only the folders each is owed, and keep the record of who saw what if the process is challenged: one secure Peony room per process, with unlimited rooms on Data Room.
No credit card · 7-day Data Room trial that never auto-charges · bidders, lenders and creditors view free, no account · 24/7 support
Last updated October 2026
8,000+ customers in 60+ countries · $44.7B in client assets
Peony staff can't open your documents, your documents aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch.
State of M&A Data Rooms (Q3 2026 edition, 733 M&A transactions from $1M to $500M): a sub-$50M room averages 1,206 files and 79 Q&A questions. The same report puts Peony's median time from sign-up to first uploaded document at 4 min 19 s. Read the research
What is a restructuring data room, and how does Peony run one?
Peony is a virtual data room that restructuring advisors, distressed companies and their lenders use to run 363 sales and refinancings, share lender and creditors' committee packages under NDA, and record who saw what.
A restructuring data room is a permissioned, audit-logged room for sharing sensitive material (financials, contracts, cap table and IP) with the counterparties involved in reorganizing or selling a business. The first decision is which track you're on: a strategic restructuring, where you control disclosure, or a distressed §363 / Chapter 11 process, where a court or creditor clock controls it. The room's mechanics are the same; the governance differs. Either way, stage disclosure in tiers, wall counterparties into groups, watermark and lock down everything sensitive, and prefer flat-rate pricing.
On Peony, an NDA gate, download prevention and screenshot protection start on the Business plan ($30/admin/month); per-group folder permissions and dynamic watermarking are on the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month), the anchor for a serious process. Peony is SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready, with both audits underway. The full playbook is in our restructuring data room guide.
- Run the sale process: one room for a 363 sale or an out-of-court M&A process, a group and private question team per bidder, earlier access for the stalking horse set by folder, and one switch to cut off a bidder that drops out.
- Serve lenders and the committee: the lender syndicate, an ad hoc group or the official creditors' committee each get their own NDA, watermark and folder permissions, so each sees only what it is owed.
- Keep the record: page-level views, NDA acceptances with email, timestamp and IP, and a per-visitor audit trail of every file opened and downloaded, kept 2 years on Data Room and with no time limit on Deal Team.
Peony at a glance
- Built for
- Chapter 11 debtors and their investment bankers, restructuring advisors and CROs; 363 sales and distressed M&A; out-of-court workouts, forbearances, amend-and-extends and refinancings; lender groups, creditors' committees and their advisors; and companies exploring strategic alternatives before a process starts.
- Typical plan
- Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly): unlimited rooms, documents and storage with no per-file size cap, a group per bidder, lender group and committee with its own folder and file permissions, a signed NDA with audit record, dynamic watermarks, Screenshield, Visitor Q&A with a private question team per party, Hide new content by default and a per-visitor audit trail.
- Pricing
- Business $30, Data Room $52 and Deal Team $64 (minimum 4 admins) per admin per month billed yearly ($44, $75 and $89 monthly); Enterprise is custom. Free ($0) covers 50 documents and 500 MB as tracked single-file links; data rooms start on Business.
- Bidders, lenders and creditors
- Bidders, lenders and creditors are unlimited and free on every plan and don't need a Peony account. You pay per admin, not per viewer.
- Rooms and storage
- Unlimited data rooms, documents and storage on Data Room and above, and no per-file size cap on any plan. Business includes 3 data rooms per admin, 1,000 documents per admin and 100 GB of storage, with no per-file size cap.
- Versus metered VDRs
- Flat-rate, not metered: Data Room is $52 per admin per month billed yearly with unlimited storage, rooms and parties and no per-page fees, against Datasite or Intralinks in the tens of thousands per process, or Firmex at roughly $5,000–10,000 per deal.
- Who sees what
- Each party is a group with its own NDA, watermark and folder tree; a folder at No access is absent from that group's view, file names included (Data Room). Hide new content by default keeps a new file hidden from every group until you grant it.
- Q&A
- Visitor Q&A with a question team per bidder or creditor group, so no party sees another's questions, and process-wide answers published to every team (Data Room); expert and approver routing before an answer is released (Deal Team).
- Record of access
- Every session logs timestamps, viewer email, IP, pages opened and downloads, plus NDA acceptance and e-signature events. Export views, sessions and downloads as CSV; Peony provides a copy of a visitor's full audit trail on request, for example after a sale closes.
- Large files
- Data Room has unlimited storage and no per-file size cap, so years of financials, full contract sets and engineering documentation fit in one room. PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images and video open in the browser with no download.
- File management
- Upload new version keeps a file's place and link and keeps every earlier version; AI room generation drafts the folder structure, and Index documents numbers every file (Data Room plan). Duplicate a data room copies its files and folders into a fresh room; groups, links and analytics start clean.
- Live models
- Peony renders .html files live with JavaScript running, so a Claude or ChatGPT artifact (a model, dashboard or calculator) stays interactive for the viewer, behind your NDA gate, permissions and analytics. The dynamic watermark applies to documents, so pair a live recovery or cash-flow model with screenshot protection and an NDA gate.
- Deal Team and Enterprise
- Deal Team ($64 per admin per month billed yearly, minimum 4 admins) adds advanced redaction, Advanced Q&A routing, daily new-file summaries to viewers, API access, room archive download and priority support. Enterprise (custom pricing) adds SAML SSO, BYOK, self-hosted or white-label deployment and EU-region hosting. Deal Team and Enterprise provide a standard DPA with SCCs on request.
- Hosting
- AWS US (us-east-1); EU-region hosting on Enterprise. GDPR-aligned, with a standard DPA and SCCs on request on Deal Team and Enterprise.
- Security
- AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.2+ in transit. Peony staff can't open your documents, your documents aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch. Peony's incident-response policy commits to telling affected customers within 72 hours of confirming an incident that affects customer data. SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready, with both audits underway. Compliance and certifications
- Setup
- Median 4 min 19 s from sign-up to first uploaded document (State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition).
- Trial
- 7-day Data Room trial you start yourself: no credit card, and it never auto-charges. Rooms, files, links, analytics and NDA settings carry over when you upgrade. AI features switch on after you upgrade.
- Support
- 24/7 support, handled directly by the Peony team across Europe, US and Asia hours, with no outsourced tier. Everyone you speak to on Peony support has M&A experience at elite boutiques or bulge-bracket banks, VC experience, or has raised $1M+ themselves.
- Customers
- 8,000+ teams in 60+ countries, with $44.7B in client assets.
Which restructuring teams use a data room, and for what?
Debtor-side bankers, distressed companies, lenders, creditors' committees and financing sources all use data rooms in a restructuring; in Peony each party gets a group in one room, or a room of its own.
Debtor-side bankers and restructuring advisors
Run the 363 sale or plan-sponsor search: a group and question team per bidder, a separate group for the stalking horse, and a record of every view for the sale hearing (Data Room). See the distressed-asset-sale playbook.
Distressed companies, CFOs and CROs
Keep the room on the company's own account while you explore a sale, a recapitalization or a new investor, and give your banker or CRO admin access. Start from the strategic-alternatives playbook.
Lenders, agents and ad hoc groups
Forbearance, amend-and-extend and refinancing packages (13-week cash flow, business plan, collateral files), with private-side and public-side lenders in separate groups (Data Room). Lender-side rooms are covered in private credit data rooms.
Creditors' committees and their advisors
Committee counsel and financial advisors share analyses with members behind a signed NDA, and keep information for the wider creditor body in its own group with a narrower folder set (Data Room).
DIP and exit financing
Lenders weighing a debtor-in-possession or exit facility get their own group and NDA with the budget, cash flow forecast and collateral folders, alongside the sale process in the same room (Data Room).
Distressed buyers and investors
Bidders open a seller's Peony room free, with no account. When you're the buyer sharing your own diligence with financing sources and co-investors, run that in your own room. For the general sale process, see M&A data rooms.
Why does a restructuring need more control than an ordinary deal room?
A restructuring room does an M&A room's job with low leverage, more parties and a process open to challenge, so "who saw what, and when" becomes a legal record, which Peony keeps per party.
The room is your control surface at the moment of least leverage.
A restructuring forces you to disclose a great deal, to people you may not fully trust, with less leverage than usual. The data room is the one part of that you can control: what goes in, who sees it, when, and whether they can take it with them. Peony tiers your IP disclosure, walls buyers, lenders, and creditors into one room, and keeps a defensible audit trail. More than 8,000 teams run sensitive processes this way.
Restructuring punishes the shortcuts companies reach for under pressure. It's the same room as an M&A or fundraising data room, doing a harder job. Three things change at once: your leverage is low, the cast is bigger (buyers, lenders, creditors, and their advisors), and the process can be challenged after the fact. Emailing documents, a shared drive, or a link-tracking deck tool fails on all three.
You're disclosing because you have to, not because you chose to
This is the Disclosure-Under-Duress problem. In a healthy raise you disclose from strength; in a restructuring a lender wants diligence, a board wants to test the market, a clock is running, and you disclose at the moment of least leverage. The room is the one part of that you can control: what goes in, who sees it, when, and whether they can take it with them.
Wrong track, wrong room
A strategic restructuring (you control disclosure) and a distressed §363 process (a court or creditor clock controls it) need the room governed differently. Most teams skip this decision and find out the hard way. Know which of the two tracks you're on before you grant the first login.
A competitor mines your IP and walks
Any bidder might be a tire-kicker or a competitor on a fishing expedition. Dump source code into a shared folder on day one and you can't watermark it, can't stage it, and can't trace it. The crown jewels need to stay gated until a counterparty is serious, and load view-only and watermarked when they finally do.
A shared drive can't revoke access or prove what was seen
Email and "anyone with the link" tools give you no per-party walls, no real revocation, and no defensible log. In a distressed process the conduct of the sale can be challenged later, so "who saw what, and when" stops being a convenience and becomes a legal record your tooling has to produce.
Which data room should you use for a distressed M&A sale or a Section 363 sale?
Use a data room that onboards many bidders fast, walls each bidder into its own group and records every view; Peony does all three on Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly. In a Section 363 sale, the debtor sells assets outside the ordinary course of business after notice and a hearing, often under court-approved bidding procedures that set who qualifies as a bidder and when bids are due. A losing bidder or the creditors' committee can object that the process favoured one party, so the room should give every qualified bidder the same diligence set, keep each bidder's questions private and keep a timestamped record of who opened what. In Peony, each bidder gets its own group with a signed NDA, its own folder permissions and its own question team, and bidders, lenders and creditors view free with no account, however many arrive. Your counsel decides what the bidding procedures require; Peony enforces the access you set and records it.
| Need | Why it matters | Setup in Peony | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onboard many bidders fast | Bidding procedures and case milestones compress diligence into weeks. | A group per bidder with a signed NDA on the way in; invitations go out as soon as you save the group, and bidders open the room in the browser with no account. | Data Room |
| Give every qualified bidder the same diligence | A losing bidder or the committee can object that the process favoured one party. | The same folder set granted to each bidder group; Hide new content by default keeps a new upload hidden until you grant it to the bidder groups. | Data Room |
| Let the stalking horse in first | The stalking horse does its diligence first, and its signed bid sets the floor for the auction. | Its own group, opened early for the diligence behind its asset purchase agreement; other bidders get the same folders as they sign on. | Data Room |
| Keep each bidder's questions private | A question reveals what a bidder is worried about and how far along it is. | A question team per bidder in Visitor Q&A; answers that apply to everyone are published to every team without naming who asked. Expert and approver routing on Deal Team. | Data Room; routing on Deal Team |
| Serve lenders and the committee alongside bidders | Secured lenders and the committee review the sale, the budget and the bids. | Their own groups, NDAs and folder trees in the same room; No access hides a folder from a group, file names included. | Data Room |
| Protect the IP being sold | Some bidders are competitors. | View-only folders, per-viewer dynamic watermarks and Screenshield; source code stays at No access until a bidder qualifies. | Data Room |
| Keep a record of who saw what | The conduct of the sale can be examined at the sale hearing. | A per-visitor audit trail of every file opened and downloaded, NDA acceptances with email, timestamp and IP, and a CSV export of views, sessions and downloads; logs kept 2 years on Data Room and with no time limit on Deal Team. | Data Room |
| Predictable cost | Estate cash is tight and the bidder count is unknown. | Per-admin pricing with no per-page, per-GB or per-viewer fees; bidders, lenders and creditors view free. | Data Room, $52/admin/mo billed yearly |
The compressed, defensible build is in our distressed asset sale data room guide; for the bankers who run these sales, see Peony for investment banking.
How does a Section 363 sale run in Peony, from stalking horse to closing?
A 363 sale runs in one Peony room: the stalking horse gets its group first, every other bidder gets an identical group as it signs the NDA, and losing bidders are switched off at closing.
- Prepare before the process starts. Build the room on the company's own account and index it from the diligence checklist buyers and lenders will send; turn on Hide new content by default so nothing reaches a group until you grant it. AI room generation drafts the folder structure from a one-line description, and Index documents numbers every file (Data Room).
- Bring in the stalking horse. Give the stalking horse bidder its own group and NDA, with the folders it needs to agree an asset purchase agreement before the sale motion is filed.
- Open the room to other bidders. Marketing often runs both before and after the court approves the bidding procedures. Each potential bidder that meets the procedures' participation requirements signs the NDA on the way in and lands in its own group with the same folder set (Data Room).
- Run diligence and Q&A to the bid deadline. Each bidder asks through its own question team, and answers that apply to everyone are published to every team. Upload new version keeps a revised schedule at the same link, and page-level analytics show which bidders are working the room.
- Auction and sale hearing. If the procedures call for an auction, the audit trail, NDA acceptances and per-group permissions show what each bidder could see and when; your counsel decides how to use that record.
- Close and wind down. Switch off losing bidders' groups, keep the buyer's group open for transition items, and keep the logs: 2 years on Data Room and with no time limit on Deal Team, where you can also download the whole room as an archive.
Lenders and the creditors' committee run alongside in their own groups throughout. Timing, notice and who qualifies are set by the bidding procedures and your counsel; the room enforces the access and keeps the record.
How do you share documents with a creditors' committee in Chapter 11?
Give the official committee and its advisors their own Peony group behind a signed NDA, release only the folders your confidentiality arrangement covers, and record every view. In a Chapter 11 case, the United States Trustee usually appoints an official committee of unsecured creditors, which hires its own counsel and financial advisor to review the debtor's finances and any sale. Section 1102(b)(3) of the Bankruptcy Code requires the committee to provide access to information for the creditors it represents who are not on it, so committees often agree an information protocol, sometimes approved by the court, that keeps confidential and privileged material out of that wider access. In Peony, the committee's professionals, its members and the wider creditor body can be separate groups, each with its own NDA, watermark and folder tree, and a folder set to No access is absent from a group's view, file names included (Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly). Your counsel decides who is entitled to what; Peony enforces it and keeps the record.
How do you run a lender data room in an out-of-court restructuring or refinancing?
Give the lender syndicate, any ad hoc group and their advisors each a Peony group with its own NDA, watermark and folders, and keep public-side lenders on public information only. Out-of-court work, such as a forbearance, an amend-and-extend, an exchange or a new-money refinancing, often runs on weekly 13-week cash flow updates, variance reports and a revised business plan. Lenders who trade the debt often choose to stay public-side; those who agree to receive confidential information become restricted, typically until the company discloses that information publicly in a cleansing release. In Peony, put private-side and public-side lenders in separate groups, turn on Hide new content by default so each upload stays hidden until you grant it, and use Upload new version so the latest forecast replaces the last at the same link with every earlier version kept. Domain-gated access lets everyone at a lender's domain in without listing each address (Data Room, $52 per admin per month billed yearly); on Deal Team ($64, minimum 4 admins), email-access viewers get a daily summary when new files are added.
For ongoing borrower reporting once the refinancing closes, see borrower reporting data rooms and the private credit data room guide.
How does Peony control disclosure in a restructuring?
Peony controls disclosure in three ways: it governs the room by track, tiers IP exposure to each counterparty's commitment, and walls every party into its own group with its own record.
Disclose what you must, to whom you choose, on terms you control. Peony treats the room as a control surface, not a filing cabinet. Govern disclosure by track, tier your IP exposure to counterparty commitment, wall every party into its own group, and keep a defensible per-group audit trail. For a serious process, lead with the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month); the M&A-focused Deal Team plan ($64/admin/month) adds advanced redaction and Advanced Q&A routing, where an expert drafts and an approver signs off before an answer reaches a bidder. Start from the restructuring data room guide.
Which restructuring track are you on — strategic or distressed?
Build the room for a strategic process but in a way that survives a move to a distressed one. The architecture is identical: a clean, tiered, permissioned room is what you want in either case; only the governance changes. So a pivot from "exploring alternatives" to a §363 sale is a change in who you grant access to and how fast, never a frantic rebuild at the worst possible moment.
(Business for a single package; Data Room for per-group folder permissions)
Strategic track — you control disclosure
Exploring a sale, recapitalization, or new investor as a going concern. You decide who gets in, what they see, and when, and you can walk away. The strategic-alternatives playbook covers the quiet, going-concern build.
Distressed track — the process controls it
A §363 sale, Chapter 11, or lender-driven workout on a court or forbearance clock, with stalking-horse dynamics and creditor information rights. The distressed-asset-sale playbook covers the compressed, defensible build.
Build once, pivot without rebuilding
Pre-build the index from the diligence checklist a buyer or lender will send, before they send it. The same indexed, permissioned room serves a strategic buyer, a new investor, or a senior lender; you just open the right tiers to the right group.
How do I disclose IP and source code at the moment of least leverage?
Tier your disclosure to commitment: never expose the crown jewels to a party that hasn't earned access. Three tiers, each unlocked by a higher level of counterparty commitment, so a competitor running a fishing expedition stalls before it ever reaches the engineering folder, and everything it does see is view-only, watermarked, and traceable.
(Data Room for watermarks, Screenshield and per-group tiers; screenshot protection and download prevention from Business)
Stage disclosure in three tiers
Tier 1 (NDA accepted): teaser, summary financials, structure. Tier 2 (indication of interest): detailed financials, contracts, draft purchase agreement. Tier 3 (signed LOI / clean team): source code, engineering specs, trade secrets, view-only with downloads off.
Per-viewer dynamic watermarks
On the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month), every page a Tier 3 group opens is stamped with the viewer's email, IP, and timestamp, so anything photographed or leaked names the party that saw it. No tool stops a phone camera; a watermark turns the leak into a signed confession.
Screenshot protection and Screenshield
Desktop screen-capture blocking and download prevention ship on the Business plan ($30/admin/month); Screenshield adds stronger screen-capture and screen-recording protection on desktop and mobile on Data Room: attribution and deterrence applied to the most sensitive material.
How do I wall buyers, lenders, and creditors into one room — and prove what each saw?
Run one room with a walled group per party type, not a pile of separate rooms and not one shared folder. Each group sees only its slice, signs its own NDA, gets its own tracked links, and carries its own audit trail, so you serve buyers, lenders, and a creditors' committee from a single master index while keeping every wall intact and every access logged.
(Data Room)
A visitor group per party type
Strategic buyers, financial sponsors, senior lenders, creditors' advisors: each is a named container with its own folder- and file-level permissions and NDA. Lenders see the debt schedule and collateral, not your roadmap; per-group folder and file permissions are a Data Room capability.
Revoke a whole party in one action
Because access attaches to a group, disabling it cuts off every user from that party at once, with no stray live links. When a bidder drops out or a lender stands down, access ends cleanly and the audit trail is retained as proof.
A defensible, per-group audit trail
Every view, download and NDA acceptance is timestamped with user attribution, analytics are separated per group, and every question stays in the room's Q&A workspace with the team that asked it. In a distressed process that record is how the conduct of the sale is defended if a creditor or losing bidder later challenges it. Each party gets its own question team, so no party sees another's questions.
How do restructuring teams run their rooms in Peony?
Restructuring teams run one Peony room per process with a group per party, whether it's a banker's 363 sale, a CRO's forbearance, a committee advisor's member reporting or a CEO's dual-track sale.
Investment banker for the debtor: running a 363 sale on a court timeline.
Before the sale motion, the banker builds the index and opens a group for the stalking horse. Each other bidder signs the NDA on the way in and lands in its own group with the same folder set and its own question team; answers that apply to everyone go to every team at once. Analytics show which bidders are working the room before the bid deadline.
Data Room
Chief restructuring officer: negotiating a forbearance with two lender groups.
The CRO runs one room with a group for the agent and its counsel, a private-side lender group and a public-side group. Each week's 13-week cash flow replaces the last at the same link with Upload new version, and Hide new content by default keeps a draft from reaching lenders until it's granted.
Data Room; daily new-file summaries to lenders on Deal Team
Committee financial advisor: sharing analysis with committee members.
The advisor runs its own room for the committee: the members' group sees the advisor's reports behind a signed NDA, a separate group for the wider creditor body sees only what the information protocol allows, and every view is logged per member.
Data Room
CEO of an IP-rich company: running a confidential dual-track sale and restructuring.
The company keeps the room on its own account, stages disclosure in three tiers, and holds source code at No access until a signed LOI or clean-team arrangement; per-viewer watermarks name anyone who leaks a page. If the process moves into Chapter 11, the same room becomes the 363 sale room.
Data Room
"Ease of use, drag and drop capabilities, rapid response in support, and great service and value. It was easy to navigate throughout the platform as well as setting up our data room."
Joseph Garcia
Providence Water
Unlimited data rooms, documents and storage on Data Room and above, and no per-file size cap on any plan. Bidders, lenders and creditors view free, with no account.
No credit card · 7-day Data Room trial that never auto-charges · bidders, lenders and creditors view free, no account
What does a restructuring data room cost on Peony?
On Peony, a restructuring room runs on Data Room at $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage; bidders, lenders and creditors view free.
You pay per admin, not per bidder, page or gigabyte, so an advisor and a CFO as two admins pay $1,248 a year on Data Room however many bidders, lenders and creditors open the room. Compare that to Datasite or Intralinks in the tens of thousands per process, or Firmex at roughly $5,000–10,000 per deal.
Business
$30/admin/mo
3 data rooms per admin
One lender or buyer package behind an NDA gate, downloads off
Data Room · Most popular
$52/admin/mo
Unlimited rooms and storage
A group per bidder, lender and committee, watermarks, audit trail
Deal Team
$64/admin/mo
Minimum 4 admins
Redaction, Advanced Q&A routing, logs with no time limit, room archive
Try Data Room
7 days free
No credit card, never auto-charges
Build the index and invite a test bidder group
Prices per admin per month, billed yearly. Bidders, lenders and creditors are free and unlimited on every plan. Business includes 3 data rooms per admin, 1,000 documents per admin and 100 GB of storage, with no per-file size cap.
Frequently asked questions
What is Peony, and is it a good fit for restructuring, Chapter 11 and distressed sale teams?
Yes. Peony is a virtual data room that restructuring advisors, distressed companies and their lenders use to run 363 sales and refinancings, wall off each bidder and creditor group and see who read each file. Data Room, the most popular plan, is $52 per admin per month billed yearly ($75 monthly), with unlimited rooms and storage; inviting bidders, lenders and creditors is free and unlimited.
Can I try Peony before I pay?
Yes. Peony's Data Room plan has a 7-day free trial you start yourself, with no credit card, and it never converts to paid on its own. Rooms, files, links, analytics and NDA settings carry over when you upgrade. AI features, such as AI document Q&A and AI room generation, switch on once you're on a paid plan.
We're restructuring but haven't decided between a sale and a Chapter 11 — should I open the data room now or wait?
Open it now and keep it private until you're ready to grant access: the same indexed Peony room serves a strategic sale, a recapitalization or a §363 process. Build it for the track you're most likely on. The work of organizing a clean, indexed room (financials, contracts, cap table, IP schedule, org chart) is identical whatever track you end up on, and doing it early is the single biggest lever you have on speed and leverage. What changes by track is who controls disclosure and how fast counterparties arrive: a strategic process runs on your timeline; a distressed process compresses diligence into weeks on a court or lender clock. Build the room, stage the sensitive material behind permissions, and you can pivot from "exploring alternatives" to "running a sale" without rebuilding anything. In Peony, turn on Hide new content by default and nothing you upload reaches any group until you grant it; AI room generation drafts the folder structure from a one-line description of the process (Data Room). The full playbook is in our restructuring data room guide.
What's actually different between a strategic-restructuring data room and a distressed (§363) one?
The room's mechanics are the same, and one Peony room can serve either track; what differs is who controls disclosure, who's in the room, and how fast it moves. In a strategic restructuring (exploring a sale, recapitalization, or new investor as a going concern) you control the process: you decide who gets in, what they see, and when, and you can walk away. In a distressed or §363 process, control shifts to a court-supervised or lender-driven timeline: a stalking-horse bidder may get earlier or deeper access, creditors and their advisors have information rights, diligence compresses into weeks, and every access needs to be logged because the estate's conduct can be challenged. Same room, different governance. We cover each track in depth: the strategic-alternatives playbook and the distressed-asset-sale playbook.
Is it safe to put our source code and engineering secrets in a data room while we're restructuring?
Yes, if the room controls disclosure rather than just storing files and you tier what you expose, as Peony does with hidden folders, per-viewer watermarks and screenshot protection. Peony lets you keep source code, engineering documentation, and trade secrets out of the room entirely, or at No access for every group, until a counterparty is serious, then expose them view-only with per-viewer dynamic watermarks, download prevention, and screen-capture protection, so anything shown carries the viewer's identity. The mistake is treating restructuring disclosure as all-or-nothing. Stage your crown jewels: keep the most sensitive material gated until a signed LOI or a clean-team arrangement, and disclose the rest in tiers. On Peony, screenshot protection and download prevention are on the Business plan ($30/admin/month); per-viewer dynamic watermarks and Screenshield (stronger screen-capture and screen-recording protection, on desktop and mobile) are on the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month). No tool stops a phone camera, but a per-viewer watermark turns a leaked page into a signed confession that names the leaker.
Should I run one data room for buyers, lenders, and creditors, or set up separate ones?
Run one Peony room with a walled group per party type rather than separate rooms; split into a second room only for material that must never sit beside another party's. A single room with a visitor group per party type (strategic buyers, financial sponsors, senior lenders, creditors' advisors) lets each group see only what it's entitled to, sign its own NDA, and carry its own audit trail, while you keep one master index and one Q&A queue. Lenders typically need financials, the cap table, and the collateral package but not your product roadmap; buyers need the operating and commercial detail; creditors' advisors need a defined disclosure set. Group-based permissions deliver all of that in one room, and a folder at No access is absent from a group's view, file names included. Questions stay walled too: give each party its own question team in Visitor Q&A and no party sees another's questions. Per-group folder and file permissions and Visitor Q&A are on the Data Room plan ($52/admin/month); Deal Team adds expert and approver routing before an answer goes out. The one case for a separate room is material that needs hard separation, such as a clean-team set of competitively sensitive data: put it in its own room, and with unlimited rooms on Data Room that costs nothing extra.
If a bidder or lender drops out, how do I cut off their access and prove they can't still get in?
In Peony, switch the party's group off: its link stops working for every user from that party at once, and the group's view history stays in the room's records. Because access attaches to a visitor group rather than to scattered individual links, disabling the group cuts off every user from that party in one action, with no per-file cleanup and no stray live link; anyone who tries the old link sees that it can't be found, and access ends on their next load. Then retain the group's audit trail after revocation: in a restructuring that may later be scrutinized by creditors, a court, or a disappointed bidder, being able to show exactly what a party accessed and that its access was cleanly terminated is part of running a defensible process. The failure mode to avoid is the consumer-cloud pattern, an "anyone with the link" share you can't truly recall, which is one of the main reasons restructuring teams move off Google Drive, Dropbox, and link-tracking tools onto a permissioned room. See revoke access.
How much does a data room cost for a restructuring, and is flat-rate better than per-page?
Peony's Data Room plan is $52 per admin per month billed yearly with unlimited storage and rooms and no per-page metering, and flat-rate beats per-page for a large, months-long, many-party restructuring room. Per-page and per-GB pricing punish exactly the shape of a restructuring room: it tends to be large (years of financials, full contract sets, engineering documentation), open for months, and accessed by many counterparties, every variable a metered VDR bills against. Data Room is $75 billed monthly; the M&A-focused Deal Team plan is $64/admin/month; bidders, lenders and creditors view free on every plan. Compare that to Datasite or Intralinks in the tens of thousands per process, or Firmex at roughly $5,000–10,000 per deal. The point isn't "cheapest wins": a cash-sensitive restructuring is the worst possible time to sign a metered contract whose bill grows with every document and every party you add. We break down the mechanics in flat-rate vs per-GB VDR pricing.
Should I control the data room myself or let our banker or restructuring advisor run it?
Own the room and let your advisor operate inside it: keep it on a company-owned Peony account and give your banker or CRO admin access, so the room survives a change of advisor. Your banker or chief restructuring officer should run the day-to-day (managing the index, fielding Q&A, advancing bidders), but the room should not be locked inside an advisor's or bank's platform you lose when the engagement ends. Restructurings change advisors and processes restart, and you want your indexed room, audit trail, and document set to be portable assets you keep, not something you rebuild when a mandate turns over. Duplicate a data room copies its files and folders into a fresh room for a restarted process, and Deal Team adds a download of the whole room as an archive. A flat-rate room you own and grant your advisor admin access to gives you professional operation without vendor lock-in or a per-deal bill from the bank's data room. See full pricing.
Can the data room record help if a losing bidder says it didn't get equal access?
Yes: Peony's per-visitor audit trail lists every file each bidder opened, for how long and every download, and each NDA acceptance carries the viewer's email, timestamp and IP. Paired with identical folder permissions for every qualified-bidder group, that record shows each bidder had the same diligence set and when it used it. Keep all diligence in the room, with no side-channel email answers that never reach the log, and write the access rules into the bidding procedures so the record matches the stated process. The audit trail is on Data Room ($52 per admin per month billed yearly); logs are kept 2 years on Data Room and with no time limit on Deal Team and Enterprise. Export views, sessions and downloads as CSV from the Analytics tab, and Peony provides a copy of a visitor's full audit trail on request, for example after a sale closes. Whether a given record is admissible and sufficient is a question for your counsel and the court.
How fast can we set up a restructuring data room in Peony?
The median time on Peony from account creation to first uploaded document is 4 min 19 s (State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition), and a restructuring room takes five steps after that. 1. Start on Data Room, or its 7-day trial with no credit card. 2. Upload the files; Index documents numbers every file so both sides can cite it. 3. Turn on Hide new content by default. 4. Create a group per party (stalking horse, each bidder, lenders, committee) with its own NDA, watermark and folder permissions. 5. Invite each group by email; viewers open the room in the browser with no account. AI features, such as AI room generation, which drafts the folder structure from a one-line description, switch on once you're on a paid plan.
Can we reach Peony support when a court or lender deadline is close?
Yes: Peony support runs 24/7 through in-app chat, handled directly by the Peony team across Europe, US and Asia hours, with no outsourced tier. Everyone you speak to on Peony support has M&A experience at elite boutiques or bulge-bracket banks, VC experience, or has raised $1M+ themselves. Email is answered within 24 hours on Data Room and within 12 hours on Deal Team, and an urgent deal blocker, such as a bidder locked out the night before a bid deadline, is typically answered within a few hours. Deal Team adds priority support and a dedicated account manager.
How does Peony protect restructuring documents?
Peony encrypts documents with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, its staff can't open them, they aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch. Peony is SOC 2 Type II-ready and ISO 27001-ready, with both audits underway. Peony's incident-response policy commits to telling affected customers within 72 hours of confirming an incident that affects customer data. Admins sign in with an emailed one-time code or Google, with no password fallback. Viewers verify their email with a one-time code (Business and up), and a group can require a signed NDA before page one (Data Room). Hosting is AWS US (us-east-1), with EU-region hosting on Enterprise, and Peony completes security questionnaires and provides a standard DPA with SCCs, on request on Deal Team and Enterprise. Details are in the security overview.
Where do these references come from?
- 11 U.S.C. § 363 (Cornell LII): use, sale, or lease of property of the estate, including sales outside the ordinary course after notice and a hearing
- 11 U.S.C. § 1102 (Cornell LII): appointment of creditors' committees and the committee's duty to provide access to information
- Peony, State of M&A Data Rooms (Q3 2026 edition): median time from account creation to first uploaded document
- Peony docs, Security Overview: audit log contents and retention by plan
- Peony docs, Plans and Pricing: plan prices, limits and feature tiers
Sources checked October 17, 2026. This page describes how Peony supports a process; it isn't legal advice, and your counsel decides what each party is entitled to see.
Run the restructuring. Don't let it run you
Build the index once, tier your disclosure, wall every party into its own group, lock down the crown jewels, and keep one audit trail per party, on flat-rate pricing built for a large, months-long, many-party process. Join the 8,000+ teams who run sensitive processes on Peony. No credit card required.
- Bidders, lenders and creditors never need a seat or an account.
- Unlimited rooms on Data Room: a sale room, a lender room and a committee room cost the same as one.
- Median 4 min 19 s from sign-up to first uploaded document (State of M&A Data Rooms, Q3 2026 edition); the 7-day trial never auto-charges.
- Peony staff can't open your documents, your documents aren't used to train AI, and Peony has had no data breach since launch.
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Last updated: October 2026