Dean & Company assists in all stages of the private equity investment process – from fund strategy development and target identification to strategic due diligence and portfolio value improvement
The characteristics of private equity investment – a wide range of target industries, interdisciplinary business challenges, and a short time-frame for analysis – provide a challenge that aligns well with Dean & Company’s value proposition. We analyze new markets without preconceptions, and rigorously evaluate each potential investment based on in-depth research and analysis. Our generalist approach gives us the ability to apply knowledge and skills from one industry to other seemingly unrelated ones.
Since 1998, a cornerstone of Dean & Company’s Private Equity practice has been our strategic relationship with Lindsay Goldberg, a private equity firm with $10B in assets under management. We have worked with Lindsay Goldberg to evaluate investment targets and with their portfolio companies to implement strategic initiatives and operational improvement opportunities. We have also worked on a project-by-project basis with other private equity / venture capital funds. We have deep experience in all major industry sectors and have supported the evaluation of over six hundred individual due diligence targets.
Our approach in due diligence is to analyze the target’s strategic, operational, financial, and managerial strengths and weaknesses, in order to quantify the company outlook. We believe it is critical to quickly generate a very thorough understanding of the target’s business landscape, and, as, such, our due diligence approach is extremely hands-on and detailed. At the heart of the due diligence effort is a detailed business model that analyzes and projects the key inputs driving profitability. In addition to publicly available and target-provided data, we exhaustively investigate key industry issues that will materially affect the future of the target company.
Post-acquisition, Dean & Company will often team with portfolio companies to enact value-creation initiatives identified during due diligence. We have demonstrated a strong ability assisting portfolio companies in this process, allowing them to realize the identified opportunities and bring considerable returns to their investors.