Views From the Market

Anish Singla of Tequity Advisors, a sell-side tech M&A boutique focused on $20m-100m transactions, joins Mario Nigro for an insightful look at the state of tech M&A. After record activity in 2025, buyer concerns about AI disruption vulnerability are impacting certain tech sub-sectors, notably lightly-embedded point solution SaaS businesses. Anish notes that AI has moved rapidly to the forefront of...

Tyler Lang of HDL Capital, a Toronto-based M&A advisory firm, joins Mario Nigro to discuss the latest trends in lower midmarket deals. One notable shift is the lengthening of typical deal timelines to 4-6 months post-LOI, up from 2-4 months just a few years ago, driven by increased lender caution and reliance on quality of earnings reports. He also highlights a trend of sellers holding unrealistic...

Ugo Dionne, President of M&A Club Canada, joins Mario Nigro to discuss his organization’s role in Canada’s M&A ecosystem. He explains how the Club, with 20 chapters across Canada, brings together M&A service providers for monthly meetings at which they can share deal opportunities, discuss trends, and build trust-based networks. Recent “hot topics” at M&A Club sessions include the challenge of get...

In this episode, Eric Ries joins Mario Nigro to discuss his latest book, Incorruptible. The book’s thesis is that the business world’s focus on shareholder primacy and profit extraction is inconsistent with the interests of the businesses themselves. Because purpose-driven companies outperform extractive companies, buyers should diligence intangibles such as ethos, pricing restraint and employee l...

Joining Mario Nigro for this episode is Mackenzie Regent, co-founder of Kalos, a boutique transaction advisory firm providing financial due diligence and valuation for midmarket deals across North America. They discuss how global uncertainty is affecting midmarket deals, where resources for diligence deep-dives are often limited. According to Mackenzie, recent systemic shocks are interrupting deal...

Jeffrey McCain of Woodward Capital joins Mario Nigro to discuss his firm’s evolution from traditional self-funded search into a broader investing platform participating across the capital stack (including LP positions in institutional funds and equity-gap situations). Jeff describes Woodward’s focus on trades-based businesses. HVAC, in particular, is attractive in light of the industry’s inherent...

George Sabbouh of Stifel Financial joins Mario Nigro for an enlightening discussion on the state of the deal market in Canada. After an uneven “K-shaped” recovery in 2025, George is seeing strong momentum in certain sectors – metals and mining, business services, infrastructure services, and waste management – amid continuing buyer hesitancy in tariff-exposed sectors such as manufacturing. Broader...

Ezio Bondi of Bondi Produce & Specialty Foods joins Mario Nigro to discuss the M&A-driven growth of his Ontario-based food distribution business. Ezio highlights the roles that operational discipline, early adoption of technology, and a clear integration playbook have played in Bondi’s success. In a fragmented produce-distribution market, Bondi’s M&A strategy leverages its roots as a small family-...

Jeffrey Elliott, a partner in Stikeman Elliott’s funds and securities regulatory practice, joins Mario Nigro to discuss the evolution of private equity fund structures in Canada. While the classic single-fund structure and traditional “2 and 20” model are still intact, sponsors are increasingly using more complex arrangements, including co-investment vehicles, GP-led secondaries, open-ended or lon...

Join Mario Nigro and Senia Rapisarda, Managing Director of HarbourVest Canada, for a discussion of Canada’s changing venture, growth and private equity landscape. Senia and HarbourVest have become a significant presence in the Canadian market, with $1.2 billion in investments focused on the technology, climate tech and life sciences sectors. Key challenges for Canada’s entrepreneurs, in Senia’s vi...

In this episode, Mario Nigro speaks with Adrian Bartha and Quinten Griffiths, founding partners of GoodCapital, about their approach to midmarket private equity. GoodCapital was built on a high involvement, hands on model that influences everything from deal selection to post acquisition engagement and is informed by Quinten and Adrian’s own experiences as business owners and acquirers. While not...

David Au-Yeung and Victor Wong join Mario Nigro to discuss CollectiveXP, which provides investment and advisory services in Canada’s lower midmarket. After exiting Flipp, a VC-backed tech startup that achieved revenues over $100 million, David and Victor decided to use their skills, connections and capital to work with other investors. CollectiveXP’s philosophy centres on relationship building, ea...

Sebastien Dhonte joins Mario Nigro to discuss Clairvest’s approach to mid-market M&A. Based in Toronto but very active on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, Clairvest has decades of experience with its distinctive partnership-driven investment model. Their approach prioritizes alignment of interests, with existing management teams maintaining effective operational control. While Clairvest often...

In the 150th episode of Views from the Market, Ira Goldstein joins Mario Nigro to discuss the evolving role of cybersecurity in midmarket M&A. As he explains, cybersecurity diligence has become a key part of deal-making, driven by the ever-increasing value of data in many business sectors. He stresses the value of hands-on technical assessments – rather than check-the-box exercises – for many orga...

This episode of "Views from the Market" features Sévrine Labelle, Managing Director of BDC’s Thrive Lab and Thrive Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Fund, which focus on women entrepreneurs. As Sévrine notes, only 4% of investment in Canada supports women-founded businesses. The conversation centres on the newly launched $50 million Thrive ETA Fund, which helps women become entrepreneurs throug...

In this episode, Mario Nigro speaks with Andrew Sarna and Vanessa Hui of Forthlane Partners, an independent wealth management firm. Forthlane offers sophisticated institutional investment strategies to its clientele of high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and foundations. Vanessa and Andrew discuss how the firm diversifies client investments through private equity, hedge funds, and defensiv...

In this episode, host Mario Nigro talks with Oaklins Canada partner Jonathan Sherman. As a worldwide M&A advisory firm, Oaklins is able to expose Canadian midmarket businesses to a global marketplace of potential buyers and sellers, in addition to assisting with purely domestic transactions. The discussion focuses on the effect of tariff-related uncertainty on potential foreign acquirors. Jonathan...

Scott Foster, Canadian Practice Leader of the Global Transaction Advisory Group at Alvarez & Marsal, joins Mario Nigro to discuss transaction diligence in the Canadian midmarket. A&M’s integrated Canadian diligence offering has grown in recent years to encompass financial, commercial, operations IT, and tax services. As Scott notes, the current economic climate is extending many diligence processe...

In this episode, we welcome Mike Alberts of Boston-based Cohere Capital. Cohere focuses on founder-owned businesses in the $2-15 million (U.S.) EBITDA range, primarily in the tech-enabled services, software and business services sectors. The firm’s preference is to partner with existing leadership. As Mike notes, he and Cohere have had many positive experiences in the Canadian deal space and regul...

In this podcast, Mario Nigro is joined by David To, President and CEO of AT Safety Training. Always an entrepreneur at heart, David followed up a career in the apparel sector by forming his own private investment firm, Lnkd Capital, with the express purpose of acquiring and operating a midmarket business. David shares his “search” story, beginning with an information-gathering phase that covered a...

In this podcast, Sandro Mina of Boston-based Relay Investments joins Mario Nigro to discuss search-fund trends. First exposed to search as a Stanford student in the early 1990s, Sandro co-founded Relay in 2013. In the past 12 years, Relay has backed over 250 search funds in the U.S., Canada and beyond. As Sandro notes, search has moved into the mainstream as the proven success of the model has att...

Eric Silber of Riverdale Poultry joins Mario Nigro for this edition of the podcast. After leaving a career on Bay Street over a decade ago, Eric and business partner Prasanna Ranganathan decided to become independent sponsors by investing in Riverdale, a leading poultry transportation business in southern Ontario. While not initially planning a hands-on role for themselves, they soon began managin...

Stringent data protection laws and the sheer volume of digitized information in the possession of most businesses have increased cybersecurity’s importance in transactional due diligence. As Danielle Miller Olofsson explains in this episode, buyers are typically looking for a strong culture of cyber risk management in the form of privacy policies, incident response plans, and data retention schedu...

In this episode, Avneet Multani discusses Strive Equity Partners, a PE firm focused on investing as an independent sponsor in founder-owned industrial, healthcare and tech-enabled services businesses, typically in the $3-10m EBITDA range. Avneet founded Toronto-based Strive after working in the U.S. market and finding that lower midmarket deals were the best fit for his entrepreneurial work ethic....

River Ewing of Hadley Family Capital is Mario Nigro’s guest in this episode. Hadley has evolved from a manufacturing business into a diversified “family office” investor that focuses on supporting searchers in Canada and the United States. River highlights the unique advantages family offices bring to the search fund ecosystem, including flexibility and a deep understanding of small-enterprise ent...