War & Peace

Iron Mountain

In the early years of the Cold War, fear of nuclear attack sent U.S. companies scrambling to safeguard critical records. In response, Iron Mountain created the United States' first secure underground records storage center in a depleted ore mine in upstate New York. The service tapped a deeply felt need, and Iron Mountain grew, expanding into the medical, legal and entertainment industries and opening facilities throughout the Northeast.

Sullivan & Worcester began working with Iron Mountain in the 1970s and became its principal outside counsel in the 1980s. In 1988, we helped the company acquire California's Bell & Howell Records Management, Inc., in a $176 million "minnow-eating-the-whale" transaction that created a national footprint.

In 1996, Iron Mountain launched a successful IPO, and during the next seven years, we helped in acquiring nearly 100 companies worldwide. Iron Mountain became the leading software-escrow company, the leading off-site data protection company and, with the acquisition of Pierce Leahy in 2000 and Hays IMS in 2003, the only company providing a full line of records and information management services throughout the Western Hemisphere and Europe.

As information technologies and their uses proliferate, Iron Mountain continues to adapt, adding film and sound storage, technology escrow, electronic vaulting, digital archives, secure shredding and disaster recovery to its core business. Today, the company serves more than 200,000 customer accounts through 800 facilities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. In 2003, Iron Mountain debuted as a member of the Fortune 1000.