CAPITAL ADVISORY
Advisory for every stage of growth, acquisition, and exit.
We work with middle-market sponsors, family offices, and founders on buying companies, financing them, and selling them. One senior lead takes the brief and works the mandate through to close, on a network built over decades of transaction work.
WHAT WE RUN
Four kinds of mandate, one team on the file.
Buy-side advisory
Market mapping, target outreach, modeling, and valuation against your underwriting standard, carried through diligence and close.
Sell-side advisory
Exit readiness, positioning, the buyer list, and negotiation, run so the business keeps performing while it is being sold.
Capital raising
Senior debt through minority equity, structured to fund the plan you have committed to, not to reach the largest number a lender will quote.
Deal analytics
Sector deal benchmarks used to set the acquisition strategy, price the subsector, and show a portfolio against comparable deals.
BUY SIDE
Precision and speed in the middle market.
We help private equity firms, family offices, and independent sponsors originate, evaluate, and acquire assets. The work is market mapping, target outreach, financial modeling, and valuation against your underwriting standard rather than against a generic comparable set.
Deal flow comes from an international network of stakeholders who share opportunities across sectors, and we run diligence on the opportunities we represent before they reach you. Synergy models estimate the revenue and cost savings available to the combined entity, so the number you take to committee is one you can defend.
Financial diligence establishes how a target earns its revenue: cash against non-cash, recurring against non-recurring, and where the customer concentration sits. Red flags surface early, while they still affect price or structure, not in the week before signing.
Where systems, data, or security affect underwriting, operator-led technology diligence quantifies technical debt and integration risk alongside the commercial and financial work.
THE BUY-SIDE PROCESS
Four stages, and we report at the end of each one.
- 01
Mandate and market map
We write down what you are buying: sector, size, geography, and the return the deal has to clear. That becomes the screen the search runs against, and when the market answers back we rewrite it.
Checkpoint: a written mandate and a named target universe.
- 02
Outreach and screening
Owners are approached directly, including owners who were not planning to sell. Every conversation is recorded with the reason it advanced or stopped, so the pipeline is a document rather than a memory.
Checkpoint: a live pipeline with the reasoning attached to each name.
- 03
Diligence and synergy work
Financial, commercial, and where relevant technology diligence run in parallel against the same model. Synergy estimates are built from the target's own numbers rather than from a percentage assumption.
Checkpoint: a valuation with the diligence findings priced into it.
- 04
Negotiation and close
Issues found in diligence become price adjustments, indemnities, or escrow, not surprises in the final week. We manage the process end to end, because circumstances change quickly enough to derail a deal that is left to drift.
Checkpoint: signed documents and a first-100-days plan built from the findings.
SELL SIDE
Maximizing value at exit.
We guide founders and sponsors through the full sell-side process: readiness and positioning first, then buyer outreach, negotiation, and diligence management. Running it in that order is what protects management attention, and a business that keeps performing through a process is worth more at the end of it.
We write a focused CIM rather than a long one, run a competitive process against a buyer list chosen for fit and ability to pay, and manage the diligence room so requests arrive in a sequence the company can absorb.
For software and tech-enabled assets we also help evidence the technology case a buyer will test: scalability, data and AI readiness, and security posture. A seller who can evidence those holds the multiple that a seller who cannot will concede in the last round of diligence.
CAPITAL
Raising the capital to execute the plan.
Whether the plan is a platform acquisition, a roll-up, or a balance sheet recapitalization, we structure and raise the capital that funds it. We work across senior debt, unitranche, subordinated capital, and minority equity, and the objective is the cost of capital and the flexibility the plan needs.
New capital providers are matched to the growth strategy and to the technology investment the plan requires. A lender who has not underwritten the capex line becomes an obstacle at the first amendment.
FAMILY OFFICES
Strategic engagements for family offices.
We run buy-side mandates for single and multi-family offices, raise capital for the operating companies they hold, and introduce offices to each other where a sector or an interest is shared. Engagements are scoped to the office and what it is trying to do, rather than to a product.
M&A ANALYTICS
The acquisition strategy starts with the data.
Our analytics platform carries sector-specific deal benchmarks, including IRR, MOIC, and CAGR, built on data for 37K+ transactions mapped against 560+ subsectors. We use it to refine an investment strategy, benchmark a portfolio, and show what performance looks like against the subsector rather than against the market.
Before outreach starts, that answers what a fair multiple looks like in the subsector, where the return has come from on comparable deals, and which part of the thesis the benchmark does not support. It also gives a client something to check our recommendation against, which is the point of showing the data at all.
The same benchmarks support the work around a transaction: a business strategy, an acquisition roadmap, a capital raise, or a divestiture.
TECHNOLOGY & AI
When the target's systems matter, we read them ourselves.
The firm's Technology & AI practice is led by Sujit Maharana, Managing Director, Technology & AI Advisory, who has held the CTO and CISO seats through a full hold and exit. Where a target's systems or security affect what a buyer will pay, we can run that read ourselves: technical debt priced as capex, AI readiness, and security and compliance posture.
Technology & AI is a separate practice with its own engagement letter. No mandate on this page requires it, and taking one does not commit you to the other.
HONEST ANSWERS
Before you send the mandate.
- Who runs the mandate?
- Bass Zanjani, Managing Director, leads the capital advisory practice and owns the file from the first meeting through close. Senior attention is the offer on this side of the firm, so the person who takes your call is the person who works the mandate.
- What size transactions do you work on?
- Middle market and lower middle market, on both sides of a deal. The test we apply is whether senior attention on the file changes the outcome, and below the size threshold where a large bank staffs a deal properly, it usually does.
- How does this sit next to the business development practice?
- The business development practice works a network of funds and sponsors to originate deals and open doors. It does not run a sale process. The mandates on this page are the transaction work itself: buy-side execution, sell-side process management, and capital raising. They are separate engagements, scoped separately.
- Can we engage you for the technology read only?
- Yes, and many clients do. Technology diligence is a standalone engagement that does not require an advisory mandate, in the same way an advisory mandate does not require the technology read. It is bought from the Technology & AI practice, which operates inside the company rather than advising from outside it.
- Do you use the analytics platform on every mandate?
- On anything involving a strategy, a target list, or a valuation, yes. Benchmarks inform the recommendation; they do not replace the diligence on the specific company, which is where the price gets set.
- How is this priced?
- It depends on the mandate and it is agreed in writing before work starts. We do not publish fees on this website, because the terms belong in the engagement letter rather than in marketing copy.
Send a mandate
Tell us what you are buying, financing, or selling.
A few lines is enough: the acquisition you are working on, the capital the plan needs, or the exit you are preparing for. We will tell you whether it is work we can run and what the first month looks like.
Bass reads every brief. If the mandate is not one we can run well, we will say so rather than take it.