mergers-and-acquisitions
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Plutus Business Advisory makes the case for the boring bits
An investor introduction gets the applause. Plutus Business Advisory works on the forecasts, valuations and legal details that give the introduction a chance.
Aurigin wants your next deal to begin with a better introduction
In private markets, the right person is often outside your address book. Aurigin combines algorithms, banking analysts and mutual consent to make that introduction without announcing your business to the world.
Centari turns yesterday’s deals into tomorrow’s advantage
A law firm’s best precedent is often hiding in its own files. Centari is building a business around getting it out - and making the next negotiation better informed.
Burns & Levinson: The lawyers were valuable. The firm came apart.
A Boston partnership built a business around staying close to clients. Its 2024 breakup reveals what happens when the people carrying those relationships find a better offer.
DSV’s €14.3 billion bet on joining the dots
The Danish freight forwarder grew by buying other people’s networks. Its Schenker takeover tests whether fifty years of acquisition practice can turn a much bigger business into a better one.
Sourcescrub finds the companies that haven’t made the headlines
A trade-show list can reveal what a funding announcement cannot. Sourcescrub built a business around that small observation - and brought human research into the machinery of deal sourcing.
The $200 Million Kite That Barely Left the Ground
Kite arrived with an accomplished chief executive, an elegant theory of commerce and $200 million in committed equity. It closed after drawing about one dollar in eight - a neat lesson in how quickly a clever platform becomes useless when the deals that feed it disappear.
The Firm You Call When the Sentence Cannot Be Wrong
Kekst CNC sells something hard to put on a rate card: judgment when a company has one chance to explain itself. Its history begins with an accidental niche, a client the founder refused to defend, and a merger two decades in the making.
The Bank With the Five-Cent Name Had a Million-Dollar Problem
FMS found a narrow business hiding inside a broad profession: help community banks discover the story they already possess, then make the name, lobby, ad and employee live up to it.
The PR Firm Its Client Decided to Buy
For years, Buchanan advised WPP. Then WPP paid up to £15 million to own it. Four decades later, the little City specialist is testing whether boutique judgment can travel on a global network.
The Quiet Firm Hired for the Loudest Days
For more than 40 years, the firm once called Abernathy MacGregor has worked in the narrow interval between a boardroom decision and the headline it creates. Its newest assignment is unusually personal: making an old American counsel feel like one global firm.
The People You Call When the Press Release Is the Smallest Problem
DrivePath Advisors built an energy communications firm around a useful premise: in a crisis, fluency beats volume. Its advisers have already sat in the chair, watched the clock shrink and learned which sentence cannot wait until morning.
Mina Mar Group and the Tiny Door Into the Public Markets
For twenty years, Mina Mar Group has worked a peculiar corner of finance: the small company that wants public-market access but cannot hire an investment bank to solve every problem. Its product is less a security than a sequence - filings, accountants, lawyers, market makers, investors and, sometimes, a public shell - arranged in the right order.
ROTH Capital Partners knows who should be in the room
The growth-company investment bank turns research and investor introductions into financing opportunities. A $25 million share offering shows what that access can cost; its history shows what access cannot fix.
Dealogic keeps score on Wall Street. It also helps run the game.
Banks use Dealogic to see who is winning business, find their next mandate and manage the machinery of a capital raise. The interesting business sits between the league table and the order book.
Bennett Jones Built a 104-Year Moat Where Canada Gets Complicated
The Calgary-born firm turned resource-law fluency into a national business platform. Its most useful lesson is not to offer everything - it is to earn one difficult wedge, then follow clients into every adjacent problem.
The 109-Year-Old Law Firm That Wins by Staying in One City
Goodmans has no globe-spanning office map to sell. Its bet is more interesting: put 200-plus lawyers in one Toronto tower, give partners the hard files, and make concentration feel like reach.
Cassels Stayed in One City for 124 Years. Then Its Clients Wrote the Expansion Plan.
For more than a century, Cassels barely moved from Toronto’s financial core. Its route to becoming a three-office national business firm offers a practical lesson: let client demand choose the map, then redesign the institution around the work.
The Boston bank that only speaks fluent brand
A boutique bank that refuses to do anything but consumer deals just got a lot bigger. Here is how a Boston firm turned brand obsession into a specialty M&A practice - and why Origin Merchant Partners bought in.
How 24 Insurance Firms Merged Into One and Skipped the Awkward Small-Talk Phase
Twenty-four independent agencies merged on the same January morning in 2017. Nine years and roughly 130 acquisitions later, Alera Group is a $1.5 billion insurance and wealth firm - and it is still shopping.
Percheron’s $8 Billion Bet on the People Who Keep America Running
Percheron Capital is turning fragmented, hands-on trades into scaled service platforms. Its unusual tool kit pairs high-velocity M&A with engineers who build AI alongside the frontline.
Welsh Carson Made a 47-Year Bet on Two Industries
The New York private equity firm has spent nearly half a century turning sector focus, repeat executives and operational playbooks into a business. Its healthcare record also shows where that model can collide with regulators.
The Private Equity Firm That Put the Business Model Before the Industry
Uplift Investors raised $670 million on a deceptively simple wager: how a services company makes money can reveal more than the industry label attached to it. Its first deals in legal services show what that thesis looks like once the capital starts moving.
WHP Global’s Product Is the Name on the Box
In seven years, the New York firm assembled 15-plus familiar names and more than $8.5 billion in annual retail sales. Its real product is not a dress, sneaker or toy - it is a system for making old brands travel farther.
The House of Brands That Started With a Kilt
Society Brands buys founder-run e-commerce companies, keeps the founders on the payroll, and is betting that Canton, Ohio can out-scale the aggregators that flamed out.
The Roofing Roll-Up That Wants the Local Name to Stay on the Truck
Stonegrove is buying good roofing companies without sanding off the names customers already trust. Its wager is that local reputation and national purchasing power can share the same ladder.
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.
Wind Point Hires the CEO First. Then It Goes Shopping for a Company.
For 42 years the Chicago firm has run the buyout playbook in reverse - recruiting a billion-dollar operator before it writes a check. In July it closed a $3.2 billion fund to keep doing it.
The Chicago Firm That Reads Before It Writes Checks
Since 1981, First Analysis has turned deep sector research into venture bets and deal advice for B2B software founders. The result is one of the longest track records in Chicago venture capital, built one thesis at a time.
Meet the Chicago Firm Quietly Buying the Software That Runs Your Company
Thoma Bravo has spent two decades turning enterprise software into private equity's most repeatable playbook - roughly $180 billion in assets, more than 580 companies acquired, and a cybersecurity portfolio most governments would envy.