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Kennebunk, Maine

One sale.Done properly.

We sell family-held industrial companies, one at a time, and we never run more than six engagements at once because the seller only does this once.

Talk to a partnerRead the approach

The terms

Company size
$10M–$150M
Engagements at once
Six
Fee
Success only

The record

Founded
2003
Companies sold
94
Closed once signed
91%
Bankers
11

Kennebunk, Maine

The buyer has done this forty times. You are doing it once, and that asymmetry is the whole job.

A strategic acquirer runs a playbook it has used for years, against a seller who has never seen one. We even that up: we prepare the company for eighteen months before a buyer is called, so the first conversation happens from strength.

Ninety-one percent of what we sign closes. That number matters more than any league table, because a failed process costs the seller a year and their staff's confidence.

A process that fails costs the seller a year and their people's nerve.
Established 2003

Before we start

  1. 01

    Between $10M and $150M

    Large enough for real buyers, small enough that the owner still knows every line.

  2. 02

    Eighteen months of runway

    Time to fix the reporting before a buyer reads it, not after.

  3. 03

    One decision maker

    A family that has already agreed to sell. We do not referee that.

Eighteen months before a buyer hears the name

  1. Month 1

    Read the company

    Contracts, customers, the numbers behind the numbers.

  2. Month 4

    Fix the reporting

    Monthly accounts a buyer's accountant will not argue with.

  3. Month 9

    Reduce the dependencies

    The customer at 40%, the supplier with no contract, the key person.

  4. Month 14

    Build the book

    Written once, honestly, so diligence finds nothing we did not say.

  5. Month 18

    First buyer call

    Ten of them, chosen. Not a list of two hundred.

People

Twenty-five people, grouped by what they are responsible for.

Leadership 5

  • Alexander Jennings

    Managing Partner

  • Cynthia Middleton

    Managing Partner

  • David Kensington

    Partner

  • Deborah Grantham

    Partner

  • Donna Kirkland

    Partner

Investment 10

  • Emily Winslow

    Partner

  • Jason Thackeray

    Principal

  • Mark Oxendine

    Principal

  • Matthew Farnsworth

    Principal

  • Michelle Somerset

    Principal

  • Robert Livingston

    Associate

  • Stephanie Somerset

    Associate

  • William Farnsworth

    Associate

  • Preston Kingsbury

    Associate

  • Miriam Thorndike

    Associate

Platform and operations 10

  • Walter Ellsworth

    Head of Diligence

  • Beatrice Pemberton

    Head of Value Creation

  • Roger Ashcroft

    Head of Talent

  • Eleanor Hollister

    Chief Financial Officer

  • Malcolm Standish

    General Counsel

  • Adele Danforth

    Director of Research

  • Theodore Osgood

    Investor Relations

  • Sylvia Alden

    Head of Operations

  • Desmond Harkness

    Controller

  • Margaret Sheffield

    Office Manager

Open role

We are hiring a principal, in Kennebunk.

Six years in sell-side M&A for industrials, and the willingness to carry an engagement for two years.

Write to us