Middle Market Musings

Brent Baxter is several months into his tenure as Chief Executive Officer of the Association for Corporate Growth, the premier trade organization serving the M&A deal making community.  Brent shares his immediate vision and priorities for serving ACG’s membership, then delves into the path that brought him to this role.  Childhood in western Pennsylvania, a college-era stint as in the restaura...

Jim Apple is partner and head of sourcing at The Sterling Group, an operationally focused private equity firm based in Houston.  Jim hits the ground running with stories of a rich upbringing that included antique road shows and no TV in the house.  Discussion culminates with a review of Sterling, its two current vehicles and model that includes seven drivers of value including the one Jim is respo...

Jim Andersen wakes up as if from a bad dream, and finds himself in conversation with Andy and Charlie.  Jim is a managing partner and co-founder of Clearview Capital, a Stamford, CT based private equity fund that is often the first source of institutional capital for lower middle market owner/managers. Clearview is currently investing Fund V, an $850 million vehicle. We start off with tales from J...

This time out, Rob Brown takes us inside Lincoln International LLC, one of the preeminent middle market investment banks.  Rob joined Lincoln as one of its first employees in 1998, rising to become CEO in 2021.  He charts his own and Lincoln’s development with great insight and good humor.  Stick around for the second half, in which Rob, Andy and Charlie have an extended discussion about the “scie...

Hollywood settles the writer’s strike, the vast creative team supporting Middle Market Musings swings back into action, and we launch our third season with a standout guest!  Nishen Radia is Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of M&A at B. Riley Securities.  Nishen starts off with a panoramic tour of his well-traveled boyhood, including a stint selling (and wrecking) cars at his father’s Lond...

Chris Burbach draws the black marble and finds himself on the podcast with Andy and Charlie. Chris is Co-founder, Partner and CEO of Fundamental Income, an institutionally backed firm that offers efficient real estate-based capital to business owners and buyers, and access to net lease real estate to investors. Chris explains when and how thinking about the monetization of real estate makes sense...

Ted Kramer is the CEO of HKW, a private equity firm that traces its lineage to the early years of the 20th century.  Ted not only shares an overview of his firm’s lineage, but also traces his own beginnings in northwestern Ohio and his immersion in hockey as a schoolboy, University of Michigan star, and eventually as a professional player in the early 90s.  From there, the conversation evolves int...

Devin Mathews wanders out onto the Middle Market Musings stage and the audience goes wild at the cross-platform possibilities.  Devin is co-founder of ParkerGale, a Chicago-based private equity fund focused on profitable technology investments, and co-originator of their successful podcast devoted to companies in the tech space. Devin entertains with his account of how an art history major from SU...

Parker catches the guys up on Cowen’s successful integration into TD since his last visit.  He discusses the current market from the perspective of a larger firm with two dozen professionals on the ground in Vegas.  Parker and Charlie trade insights on Jerry Garcia vs. Bob Weir while Andy weighs the possibility that this conversation will make him seem “cool” by osmosis. (Prognosis? Unlikely). 

Bruce shows his skills as M&A lawyer and raconteur have not diminished since his last visit.  Bruce talks about his unusual intentionality in marketing off of a law firm platform at DealMAX and elsewhere.  His account of a past encounter with Peyton Manning takes about half as long as an actual football game, but is materially amusing and perfectly captures Bruce’s je ne sais quoi. 

Michelle drops by to talk about how Crest Rock – a Denver-based PE fund founded in 2019 and devoted to software, tech and business services – set out to establish a market presence in the midst of the pandemic.  She ignores the premise of “Charlie or Andy” but scores a direct on the hosts by answering, in response to a question about who you would choose to look after your children, “Neither.” 

Andy and Charlie set their sights on David Welinsky, a young star in the private credit industry. (Young = younger than Charlie.) David is a managing director in capital markets at Monroe Capital, widely regarded as a premier boutique asset management firm specializing in direct lending amongst other strategies. David talks about his upbringing, Monroe’s evolution from public BDC to diversified as...

Not unlike the guy who drives through the carwash with his top down, Jay Weinstein gets the full Middle Market Musings treatment from the co-hosts.  Jay is Vice Chair of Industries and Markets at the EisnerAmper accounting, tax and business advisory firm. Jay has seen all sides of the M&A business – from running accounting firms that merged into progressively larger practices, to overseeing ac...

Gretchen Perkins inexplicably agrees to spend an hour with Andy and Charlie.   Gretchen, partner at Avance Investment Management, is one of the best known and widely respected figures in the world of private equity business origination.  Gretchen shares the story of Avance, a two-year-old equity fund differentiating itself through investments in rapidly scalable business models in the consumer and...

Charles K. Gifford is Chairman Emeritus of Bank of America.   Chad visits the podcast to provide valuable perspective on the current tempests swirling around the global banking system.  Son Charlie and co-host Andy are on best behavior with a guest who would be an incredible “get” under any circumstances.  As CEO of the Bank of Boston, Chad had a front row seat for the New England banking crisis o...

Andrea Auerbach of Cambridge Associates stops by Middle Market Musings to offer a master class in the trends defining the private equity asset class.  Cambridge Associates is a leading advisor/portfolio manager to institutional investors.  Andrea oversees a team directing $12-15 billion per year to private investments, co-investments, and secondary opportunities.  She shares how different GPs mana...

Matt Carroll helps Andy and Charlie prove that Middle Market Musings is exactly as mature and insightful in 2023 as it was in 2022.  Matt is a managing partner at WestView Capital Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm that recently closed on its $1 billion fifth fund.  Matt has been a part of WestView since its inception in 2004.  He charts the firm’s evolution into more intense pockets of...

LA-based investment banking luminary Ed Bagdasarian misses the Slauson Cutoff and finds himself in the middle of an episode of Middle Market Musings. Ed is CEO of Intrepid Investment Bankers LLC, now part of MUFG. Ed begins with an extraordinary family story—he is of Armenian heritage, born in Romania, brought to the United States by his parents as a young teen. The family jewelry business provide...

Rusty Goodsell, CEO and Co-Founder of New Orchard LLC, joins us for a podcast all about culture – or as they say in Boston, “cultcha.”  (Charlie doesn’t say that -- other Bostonians).   New Orchard is an analytics company that helps business buyers and other clients more quickly assess organizational culture as part of their operational/investment decisions. New Orchard’s approach to “quality of o...

Pete Stavros is a Partner & Co-Head of Americas Private Equity at KKR, as well as founder/chairman of Ownership Works, a nonprofit organization that partners with companies and investors to provide employees with the opportunity to build wealth at work.  Pete and the guys discuss the role of global investment firms like KKR versus middle-market PE groups, the personal and business experiences...

Parker Weil is vice chair of investment banking at Cowen.  He provides a lively excursion through three decades in the most successful echelons of M&A, beginning with his tenure as a junior banker during the “Liar’s Poker” era at Salomon.  Parker views industry trends leading to his current role as vice chair and head of the group that encompasses sponsor coverage at Cowen.  Andy and Charlie g...

Jeffrey Stevenson finds himself on the wrong side of town and becomes Charlie and Andy’s latest accomplice.  Jeffrey is Managing Partner of VSS Capital Partners, a private investment firm that manages $4 billion in committed capital across eight funds.  He recounts VSS’s early days as an M&A firm devoted to publishing/media, then the transitions into principal investing and an industry focus b...

Tom Bohn, President and CEO of the Association for Corporate Growth, kicks off the fall season on Middle Market Musings.  Tom discusses the state of mergers & acquisitions coming out of covid, his plans for the M&A industry’s largest trade association, and the business orientation he’s brought to trade group management.  Most important, he engages in the forced, faux hip repartee that MMM...

Tarrus Richardson takes Middle Market Musings on a panoramic tour of the deal-making life. Tarrus is Founder and CEO of IMB Partners, a Bethesda, MD private equity fund targeting utilities and government contracting suppliers. Andy and Charlie ride along as Tarrus starts with stories about growing up in a family business in Chicago.  Other stops before forming IMB in 2010: student leadership roles...

As co-founder of the Harris Williams investment bank, Chris Williams is one of the best known figures in private company M&A.  Chris’s storied career hits the wall that is Middle Market Musings. He regales Charlie and Andy with tales from his early career, then moves on to Harris Williams’ path to being an industry standard bearer.  We also cover Chris’s evolution into private equity investor...