M&A ADVISORY
Advisory for every stage of growth, acquisition, and exit.
We run three kinds of mandate for middle-market sponsors, owners, and family offices: buying companies, selling them, and financing them. One senior lead takes the brief and owns the file through to close, so the person who answers the first call is the person who negotiates the last point.
WHAT WE RUN
Three mandates, one accountable lead.
Buy-Side Advisory
Where capital should be deployed, which targets fit the thesis, and what the evidence says about price. Market intelligence sets the mandate, sourcing follows it, and financial diligence tests the specific asset before price or structure is fixed.
Sell-Side Advisory
Exit readiness first, then positioning, the buyer list, outreach, and negotiation. Run so the business keeps performing while it is being sold, because a company that misses its numbers during a process gives the value back at the confirmatory stage.
Capital Raising
Senior debt through minority equity, structured to fund the plan the company has committed to rather than to reach the largest number a lender will quote. Recapitalizations, growth equity, and EB-5 where a project qualifies for it.
THE DIFFERENCE
We execute transactions and we have operated the companies underneath them.
Bass Zanjani leads M&A Advisory and owns the mandate from the first meeting through close. Senior attention is the offer on this side of the firm, so the file does not get handed down to an associate once the engagement letter is signed.
Sujit Maharana leads Technology & AI and has held the CTO and CISO seats through a full hold and exit. Where a target's systems, data, or security posture carry the earnings, one firm can read both the financial and the operating side without the client briefing a second adviser from scratch.
The two practices are bought separately and scoped separately. Hire either one alone and nothing breaks. What one firm buys you is the handoff, at the point in a deal where the financial questions turn into technical ones.
Who we work with
BUY-SIDE INTELLIGENCE
Know where capital can work, and where it should not go.
Before a target list exists, we test the deployment thesis against private-market evidence. Which subsectors fit the mandate on growth, return, and risk. Where returns have been weak or losses common. What comparable assets transacted on. Whether the value-creation plan rests on observed drivers or on multiple expansion nobody can account for.
The analysis directs the work that follows. It sets what we pursue, what we filter out, and which questions have to be answered before a target advances to financial diligence or a technology read.
It informs the recommendation and it does not replace it. Benchmark context is not an automated recommendation, it does not substitute for diligence on the specific company, and it does not guarantee investment performance.
HOW A BUY-SIDE MANDATE UNFOLDS
Five phases, and we report at the end of each one.
- 01
Market intelligence and capital deployment
We test where capital should go, where returns have been weak, and what risk has to be priced, then write the deployment view and the underwriting constraints that follow from it.
Checkpoint: a capital-deployment view, a written investment thesis, and the underwriting constraints.
- 02
Opportunity sourcing and origination
Either we screen in-market opportunities shared through CCA relationships against the thesis, or we run a retained search that creates proprietary deal flow. The route is chosen with the client, not assumed.
Checkpoint: a reasoned screening decision, or a live pipeline with advance and stop rationale on every name.
- 03
Financial Due Diligence
Revenue quality, earnings quality, cash conversion, customer concentration, working capital, and the factual basis for any synergy assumption, tested against the specific asset rather than the sector.
Checkpoint: a revised financial view, a valuation range, and the diligence issues priced into the deal.
- 04
Technology diligence, where it is material
Where systems, data, cybersecurity, AI, or integration risk affect the durability of the earnings, the questions go to Technology & AI Assess. Many mandates never reach this phase, and that is a finding rather than a gap.
Checkpoint: a pre-close technology risk view and the first hundred days of technology priorities, where required.
- 05
Investment decision, negotiation, and close
Market, financial, and technology findings come back to one investment case. Issues become price, structure, indemnities, escrow, or a walk-away, decided before the final week rather than during it.
Checkpoint: signed documents and a first-hundred-days plan built from the findings.
SECTOR EXPERTISE
Four sectors where the pattern is already familiar.
Sectors are not an audience and they are not a separate service. They are where a mandate benefits from knowing which questions matter before anyone asks them.
Software and Tech-Enabled
Recurring revenue and retention, product and engineering capacity, AI and data readiness, and whether the architecture supports the growth the model assumes.
Healthcare and Med-Tech
Regulatory exposure, reimbursement and payer concentration, data and security posture, and the operating complexity that sits behind a margin plan.
Industrial
Asset intensity, maintenance practice and throughput, operational technology exposure where plant systems are connected, and where margin improvement comes from.
Business Services
Customer concentration, labor and process scalability, commercial repeatability, and how cleanly an add-on integrates into the platform.
TECHNOLOGY & AI
The handoff happens after financial diligence, not before it.
Financial diligence establishes how a target earns its revenue. Where the answer depends on systems, data, cybersecurity, AI, or an integration the thesis assumes, those questions go to the Technology & AI practice as a deliberate step in the mandate.
The technology lead receives the investment thesis and the diligence questions CCA has already developed. The client does not re-brief a disconnected consultant, and the technology read comes back priced as capital expenditure, EBITDA drag, and exit exposure rather than as a risk register.
Technology & AI is separately scoped with its own engagement letter. A buy-side mandate does not require it, and a technology assessment does not require an M&A mandate.
HONEST ANSWERS
Before you send the mandate.
- Who runs the mandate?
- Bass Zanjani, Managing Director, leads M&A Advisory 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 where a large bank staffs a deal properly, it usually does.
- Is the Technology & AI practice required on a deal?
- No. It is a separate practice with its own engagement letter, and most buy-side mandates never trigger it. We bring it in when systems, data, security, or an assumed integration affect price, downside protection, or the value-creation plan, and we say so at the point the question arises rather than bundling it into the mandate up front.
- What does the market intelligence work cover?
- Where capital can work in the subsector, where returns have been weak or losses common, what comparable assets have transacted on, and whether the value-creation plan is supported by observed drivers. It is used to set and challenge the thesis before outreach starts. It is not a market report we sell separately, and it does not replace diligence on the specific company.
- Can you run both sides of a deal?
- Not on the same transaction. A buy-side mandate and a sell-side mandate are separate engagements for separate clients, and we will tell you if a conflict exists before we take the brief.
- 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.