Harris Williams Vet Launches Buyside Firm
Crofton Capital will open its doors next week, focusing on buy side acquisitions in the New England region.
August 7, 2009
Amidst the collapse of available financing for leveraged transactions, deal flow for private equity firm and advisors have all but dried up. Despite the current difficulties, Phil Ivey, a Harris Williams veteran, has decided to launch Crofton Capital, an independent buyside private equity firm.
In speaking with MergersUnleashed, Ivey said he was interested in becoming more involved in the strategic and operations side of smaller businesses. “The next year or two there is going to be a very good time to enter the business,” Ivey said. “If you’re not hampered by investments made during the boom years, there is a lot of opportunity.”
The newly-launched firm has not raised a fund yet. Ivey told this publication that he plans to finance smaller deals in house and would enter initiate partnerships with co-investors for mid to larger deals.
At Harris Williams, Ivey was a managing director based in the Boston office. He will remain in the same area, based out of Wellesley, Massachusetts and he will remain focused on acquisitions in the New England area. He said he will focus on specialty manufacturing, value-added distribution, and business services sector acquisitions.
Last month, Mike Dinan, president and chief executive of buyside advisory firm Dinan & Co., told MergersUnleashed, “Our firm is counter-cyclical. We have more deal flow now than we had during the boom.”
As sell-side advisors counsel business owners against a exit during this period, buyers remain unwilling sit on the sidelines. As a result, several PE firms have sought buy-side advice to help persuade companies into considering the possibilities.
Sven Kins, managing director with Cook Associates' M&A Advisory Services, said more competition is coming in the form of sell-siders jumping the fence to take on buy-side mandates. He commented that clients have told him, “There are a lot more guys doing what you're doing.”
"If anything, it validates what we've been working on," he adds. "Just as over the past few years, we didn't switch to investment banking; it's our belief that you can't be both a sell-side and a buy-side shop."
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