Middle Market M&A Experts

Featured Experts

Erick Hamdan

Erick works with business owners, investors, and private equity firms looking to create value and maximize their returns on exit. Working as adviser, founding partner, and/or CFO of three private companies that each grew to revenues over $300 million, he has worked on valuing, acquiring, and integrating over 30 companies.

Dave Kauppi

Dave Kauppi is a Merger and Acquisition Advisor with MidMarket Capital, Inc. Dave is based out of the greater Chicago area and specializes in Technology, Information Technology, Healthcare and intellectual property focused companies. Dave is also the author of the Exit Strategist Newsletter.

Derek van der Plaat

Derek is a Managing Director at Veracap M&A International Inc. He has over 20 years of corporate finance experience, both as an adviser with a major Canadian bank and as a owner-entrepreneur. Derek started his career in Investment Banking with CIBC M&A where he focused on acquisitions, divestitures, and financing advisory services to companies in the manufacturing, food, transportation, printing, chemical, engineering, wholesale, telecom, hardware and software sectors.

Q&As

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“What are some of the key differences between a financial buyer and strategic buyer?”

The key difference between a strategic buyer and a financial buyer is that a strategic buyer is typically going to be buying all of your company. There are a couple of differences once this happens...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What tools do private equity firms use to create value?”

There aren't many proprietary tools that private equity groups can use to create value. Business management, sales, and marketing strategy have been well researched and published in which the best...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What should a business owner expect from private equity due diligence?”

When the entrepreneur has decided to work with the private equity group, and they enter into a contract to close the deal, it will have to undergo a due diligence process that can be quite intensive...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What should a business owner expect after being acquired by a private equity firm?”

That’s a good question. A business owner, upon entering into a relationship with a private equity group, is going to experience a range of things because they are really entering into a new business...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What should a CEO consider when negotiating with private equity groups?”

There are probably too many things to list that are really important for a business owner to understand about their agreements and documents with a private equity group. It is very important for the...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What is the single best thing I can do to sell my business at a premium?”

I’ll break it into two broad categories and I’ll give the underlying assumption. The underlying assumption is that at some point, all deals will come down to certain metrics. In the world that we...

Answered by: Kenneth H. Marks

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“What are important legal issues to consider in a Letter of Intent?”

Price and terms get locked down in an LOI, but they tend to get locked down on a "to be confirmed" by the due diligence phases. So if I’m on the buy side and I get some unexpected due diligence...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“What corporate governance changes can drive shareholder value?”

To set the context of my answer, many lower mid-market companies have a Board of Directors, but the board is made up of someone's mother and brother who have never done anything except vote in his...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“How do you value intangible assets in a business sale?”

You know from my book, Harvesting Intangible Assets, that this is a very, very big hot button topic for me. I believe that in this information-based social-media-driven economy that we now live in...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“Can private equity be a solution for family succession transactions?”

The trend in the market right now is that the baby boomers who are the largest segment of the population are reaching retirement. These are the people that have built companies and built great...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What should a business owner look for when selecting an investment banker?”

You should look for a fit between your company and the investment bank. What do I mean by fit, because there are different things to consider? Say you have a technology company that can sell for $30...

Answered by: Kenneth H. Marks

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“What are some creative M&A deal structures?”

So there are a couple of things here. One deal structure that is starting to pop up is Davids buying Goliaths. When we think of M&A, we think of transactions involving companies smaller than us...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“What is the most important thing to consider when selecting a private equity firm?”

That’s a good question. The most important thing for a business owner to consider when selecting a private equity is the philosophy and vision of the private equity group that the entrepreneur...

Answered by: James Darnell

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“What are the most contentious issues when negotiating a Purchase Sale Agreement?”

There’s one issue that trumps them all. Do you remember the children’s game of hot potato, where the ball would get passed around from kid to kid and then the teacher would blow the...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“How do I differentiate between growth capex versus sustaining capex?”

The simple answer is: with great difficulty. I began giving business valuation opinions in 1969, about 45 years ago, and I can tell you that up until about 25 years ago, I can’t remember...

Answered by: Ian Campbell

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“How should a deal team interact to ensure that an M&A deal gets to a closing?”

This is really, really, really, that’s triple really important. First of all, the deal team that the business owners select, should have experience ideally as a team. Have these guys work...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“How do you determine the right amount of working capital that should be left in the business?”

First, we start by trying to understand how the buyer thinks about working capital. We do a lot of transactions where it’s a strategic buyer and they have their own internal understanding of...

Answered by: Kenneth H. Marks

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“What is the impact of supplier concentration on business value?”

Concentration in the acquisition world is a bad word. Businesses with high supplier concentration attract fewer buyers and this lowers the price. What’s too high? Having a supplier with 40% of...

Answered by: Rose Stabler

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“What clauses should a business owner pay particular attention to in a Purchase Sale Agreement?”

Reps and warranties, which essentially deal with the allocation of risk, are a little tricky. Business owners should go through those carefully. You are making representations and warranties to which...

Answered by: Andrew J. Sherman

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“Which professional is most qualified to perform a business valuation for the purpose of selling?”

Let me start by saying that I have never walked into someone's office and adjudicated the occupant’s capability based on the degrees hanging on the wall. I'm much more a person who is...

Answered by: Ian Campbell

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