business-succession
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At EEB, the Boss Goes Back to School
At Québec’s École d’Entrepreneurship de Beauce, business owners check in for lessons from people who have signed the payroll. Its wager: time away from the company can make the person running it more useful.
A Bad First Deal Cost Him Everything. Lynx Equity’s Answer: Buy Boring Businesses and Never Sell.
Brad Nathan’s first deal wiped him out. His second act was built on a less cinematic idea: buy sturdy companies from retiring owners, read the balance sheet, and keep the good parts intact.
The $1.7 Billion Wealth Firm That Sold the Plumbing - and Kept Its Name
US Financial Services spent three decades building a planning practice around life transitions. Then it made a counterintuitive succession move: join a larger platform, preserve the local brand, and turn the firm itself into a home for other advisers.
The $4 Billion Freedom Bet: How XML Financial Group Built a Wealth Firm by Refusing to Build Alone
XML Financial Group escaped the big-bank playbook, then discovered that independence works better with infrastructure. Its repeatable trick is equal parts personal advice, succession planning and culture-first M&A.
The Private-Equity Firm That Passes the Hat
Borgman Capital buys the kind of profitable, founder-led companies that rarely become household names. Its twist is structural: no traditional fund, capital raised one deal at a time, and a real-estate team that can buy the building along with the business.
Timah Partners
Timah Partners is a Singapore-based permanent holding company that acquires essential, recurring B2B SMEs across Southeast Asia and holds them for the long term, with no intent to flip. Founded by Dennis Chua, it pairs patient capital with a CEO Succession (CEO-in-Training) program that develops the next generation of operators to run its portfolio companies. The firm positions itself as a permanent home for owners who lack a succession plan, prioritizing culture, founder legacy, and operational stewardship over quick exits. It closed a US$50 million Series A in June 2025.
Baton
Baton is a New York-based online marketplace that helps owners sell their small businesses and helps buyers acquire them. It replaces the slow, opaque world of traditional business brokers with fast data-driven valuations, confidential listings, digital data rooms, and guided M&A support - achieving a roughly 70% close rate at about half the cost of conventional brokers.