On Wednesday, November 3 2021, Upstate Capital hosted the Buffalo Private Equity Summit at Resurgence Brewing Company in Buffalo, NY. This event featured four panels with investors, dealmakers and M&A professionals, as well as opportunities to network.Upstate Capital would like to thank our sponsors KeyBank, Graycliff Partners, Freed Maxick, Hamilton Lane, Pine Street Capital Partners, Paramax Corporation, Lippes Mathias LLP, Lockton, Chiampou Travis Besaw & Kershner LLP, Bluehenge Capital Partners and Wells Fargo for supporting this event.
The first panel to kick off the event was Putting Together a Deal with Brandon Martindale from Graycliff Partners, Russell D’Alba from Paramax Corporation, John Koeppel from Lippes Mathias and Sean Moskal from KeyBank. They discussed the increase of deal flow and the ability for both healthy companies and weaker companies to be acquired. One takeaway from this panel was the importance of working with the right people, and carefully selecting partners. Another topic covered was the timeline of completing deals. While twelve months may be ideal, there is the possibility for a much shorter turnaround. Russell, for example, recently completed a deal in only 60 days.
Up next, Tara Handforth from Wells Fargo moderated a Private Equity Investor Perspective panel with Kenneth Bryant from Sidereal Capital Group, Michael Lasch from Pine Street Capital Partners and Trevor Messerly from Hamilton Lane. This panel included a conversation about where companies should be investing and how having access to multiple pools of capital creates the opportunity to invest locally as well as further from your base. The panel discussed the importance of showing up and helping CEOs avoid making costly mistakes. Once again, having a trusted partner is key.
The next panel was the CEO Spotlight: Putting together the AML RightSource Deal moderated by David Mancuso from Freed Maxick with Frank Ewing, CEO of AML RightSource and Bradley Skaf from Gridiron Capital. Both Frank and Bradley emphasized how important relationships are on both sides of any deal. In addition, the success of a partnership relies on communication and having an open dialogue with your investors as well as being open to change. Bradley also mentioned that as an investor you can help build the team around the CEO. The role of the investor is to help provide structure for what kind of capital the company needs and when.
The final panel of the evening was New York State Investing with Frank McEvoy from the New York State Common Retirement Fund and David Helgerson from Hamilton Lane. David asked the important questions while Frank gave insights into his role with the NYS Common Investment Fund since 2007 and the work that he has done to grow the NYS economy.
The event concluded with networking and opportunities to connect with the panelists during the cocktail reception.
Congratulations to Joseph Brennan on winning the charity raffle at the Buffalo Private Equity Summit! $100 will be donated in his name to his choice of charity, the Park Foundation.
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