Two investment bankers have left Denver investment bank Green Manning & Bunch Ltd. to start Slate Partners LLC.

The new firm, also headquartered in Denver, will provide M&A advisory services to building materials and building services companies, including manufacturers, distributors and producers of natural and manufactures building materials nationwide. Slate will also provide services to architects, engineers and construction services providers.

Jason Munoz and Aaron Bachik, both managing partners at Slate, started the firm.

"The group we started was part of an emergence from generally-focused M&A firms to much more targeted and specialized firms," Munoz says. "In our minds, what provides the most value to our clients is establishing a firm dedicated to one particular industry."

Slate already has two active engagements that Munoz and Bachik took from their previous job, subject to an arrangement with Green Manning. The company also has commitments from three other investment bankers to join.

The firm will focus on clients generating Ebitda between $5 million and $15 million, and advise both sell-side and buy-side transactions.

"Our buying side will be much more of the equivalent of an outsourced M&A group," Bachik says, adding that he has often seen private equity funds and strategic companies that prefer to have one in-house person focus on M&A, and then outsource the rest of the deal work. 

Munoz and Bachik ran the building materials and services group at Denver investment bank Green Manning & Bunch Ltd. until the end of February. Green Manning focuses on health care, industrial services and manufacturing deals.