ACG: A Trusted Community for Business Development

I became involved in ACG when our chapter, now dubbed the Greater Cincinnati chapter, was formed, and I have been closely involved ever since. On both the local and national levels ACG has brought value to my business. After 30-plus years of practice, I know most of the deal community in Cincinnati, and ACG introduced me to many of those individuals. More importantly, ACG continues to be key to my maintaining contact with a wide variety of local business people and private equity and service professionals. The importance of staying in touch cannot be underrated, and our monthly ACG meetings are a very important part of strengthening those ties. Six years ago I became more involved with ACG at the national level, serving on the ACG board of directors, and attended my first ACG InterGrowth conference. I have been attending ever since! This national exposure has been tremendously valuable to me on a variety of levels, and I offer the following as just a few examples of how useful this level of involvement has been to my career and business development: Due diligence. Once I was contacted by an investment banker in California who was previously unknown to me. I wanted to know if the gentleman had integrity and was capable. ACG immediate past president Jim Tucker of ACG Orange County confirmed that this person unknown to me had integrity and was a real professional. Business development: On several occasions I have been contacted by prospective clients who sought me out only because of my ACG involvement. Private equity: I have met several private equity professionals who have been sources of financing. Sometimes they did the deal, but other times when the deal was outside of their parameters, they referred me to others. Jim O’Donnell of ACG St. Louis and Mark Jones of ACG Atlanta are great examples of this high level of trust implied in such referrals among ACG members. Other: Recently I needed to confirm the owner of a business on behalf of a client who was interested in buying the company. Gary Levenstein of ACG Chicago not only confirmed the information but put me in touch with the seller’s investment banker. Coincidentally, five days after I placed the call to Gary, I discovered the same investment banker was coming into town for ACG Cincinnati’s Deal Maker Awards Dinner! The two of us arranged to meet with my client, and it now appears to be leading to a deal that could not have happened without ACG. ACG was very much helpful here twice! I attended my first ACG InterGrowth in 2000. Knowing very few people has never stopped me from attending an event, but I found InterGrowth to be one of the most welcoming conferences I have ever attended. To say that ACG members are gregarious is to understate the fact, and I know that many others feel the same way. At that first InterGrowth I probably met 75 or more deal professionals, many of whom I have maintained relationships with and others with whom I’ve stayed in contact, at a minimum. Since attending that conference in 2000, I have formed countless other relationships with reliable business associates – all at and through InterGrowth. Recently, ACG members started receiving Mergers & Acquisitions as part of our membership. The information in this journal alone is worth several times my membership dues. As the marketplace continues to heat up, I believe ACG will offer a real market advantage because of the types of relationships one can create and maintain. More and more I hear about the advantage to sellers of speed to market, the advantage to buyers of quick access, and the advantage of access to the private equity markets to finance transactions. All of this quick positioning comes through having trusted contacts in the deal community – powerful networking. People do business with people they know. This is one of the key values of ACG to it members. Donald J. Feldmann ACG Vice President New Chapter Development President & CEO Winton Associates Inc. [email protected] (c) 2005 Mergers and Acquisitions Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.majournal.com http://www.sourcemedia.com