George Shea – Private Equity Provides IT Growth Capital

Posted on February 4, 2011

In the linked interview below George Shea, Partner and Information Technology Team Leader at Focus LLC, provides an update on the strong market in information technology deals.  George shares a growing willingness in the Private Equity industry for firms to go beyond their traditional buyout structures to fund recaps that take out earlier stage investors and provide growth equity for their portfolio companies.  This can be a superior option to strategic sales for management teams that want to keep control of their operations.  Additionally George has found an increased willingness among the PE community to consider minority growth equity transactions and other innovative financing options for rapidly growing firms.

To see a the interview, click on the picture or link below:

http://proclaim.netbriefings.com/flv/focusbankers/ko168/focusbankeko168100468/

Interview with Peter Lehrman – CEO of AxialMarket

Posted on February 4, 2011

When I first started in the M&A business there were a few hundred private equity firms in the U. S. and virtually none overseas.  Getting to know them was relatively easy.  Today there are literally thousands of PE firms in the U. S., hundreds, if not thousands  in Europe, and a rapidly growing complement of Asian and middle eastern PE firms focused on the emerging market countries. Picking the perfect candidate to acquire or invest in any particular lower middle market company has become an overwhelming challenge for intermediaries focused on a good ‘ole boy Rolodex approach to the M&A business.

AxialMarket (www.axialmarket.com) was created to fill that gap.  Axial provides an online marketplace populated by more than 1500 intermediary firms and thousands of PE firms, strategic buyers, family offices, venture capitalists and other qualified private market participants who use Axial’s controlled, trusted marketplace to confidentially source and manage a pipeline of transaction opportunities across the private markets.  Pre-qualified intermediaries have the opportunity to post blind listings of companies for sale or needing financing or recapitalization.  On the buyside PE firms as well as strategic buyers pay monthly subscription fees to have access to thousands of qualified listings.  Axial uses its sophisticated SaaS database to pre-select those buyside firms most likely to be interested in a particular deal.  These firms are then presented to the intermediary for consideration and only approved buyers are permitted to see the deal summaries.  The bottom line is that deals are getting down; more than three thousand business sales, including companies with revenues from $1 million to $400 million have been completed utilizing Axial listings since its inception.

Today we are pleased to have with us Peter Lehrman, the driving force behind AxialMarket.  Highlights of Peter’s interview (4 1/2 minutes) as well as the full interview (about 30 minutes) can be viewed by clicking on his photos or the urls below:

For highlights click below:

http://proclaim.netbriefings.com/flv/focusbankers/ko168/focusbankeko168100499/

For the the full interview click here:

http://proclaim.netbriefings.com/flv/focusbankers/ko168/focusbankeko168100498/