Why Choose Us?

John Kingston is an Executive Vice President and Senior M&A Advisor with 20+ years of experience working with companies within various industries and of various scale. Previously, he spent 10 years as an Investment Banker in New York with Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Industrials Group, where he worked closely with public and private companies, financial sponsors and investors/shareholders originating and executing strategic advisory and capital markets transactions. His breadth of expertise includes mergers & acquisitions and divestitures, transaction execution, capital raising (debt and equity). John has spent the majority of his professional business career advising industrial product and service companies and is also experienced with building products, professional contractor, and prestige consumer retail businesses.

John’s experience with small and mid-sized companies first began in 1998 working with his family’s Southern California based aerospace manufacturing company. It was during this time that he was involved with his first acquisition process, being responsible for leading the integration of an acquired product line. Since that time, he has continued to develop and refine his capabilities, having served as a consultant/strategic advisor and advisory board member to the shareholders of several small and mid-sized businesses. He has experience as a small business owner/operator through a company he acquired and later divested prior to relocating back to Nashville, TN. 

John has an MBA in Finance from Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management and a BA in History from the University of Colorado. He served on active duty as an officer in the United States Marine Corps completing two combat deployments to the Middle East during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is a licensed REALTOR® in the state of Tennessee and enjoys real estate investing in his personal time. John’s greatest accomplishment is his family, being a father to his 6-year old son and husband to his wife of over 13 years.

John offers his clients an extensive experience-based perspective, having been both a buyer and seller of small and mid-sized companies in addition to his advisory roles. This enables his thoughtful and carefully crafted guidance regarding the sale process, prospective buyers, marketing strategy, valuation, and risk management.

Jim Shaub is an experienced business sales intermediary, M&A Advisor, and bank and private capital sourcing specialist, having been involved in all aspects of a business’s life cycle. This experience includes starting, selling, buying, mergers, family, and management ownership transitions, restructuring and bankruptcy reorganizations. He is a published journal author on the subjects of financing a business, and investment business analysis. Jim has an understanding and empathy of a business owner’s challenges and issues when facing the transition of a business, one that often embodies the owners themselves. This is often the first and only time the owner will be going through this process, which makes it critically important to engage a partner who has the experience and understanding of how this transition will affect all the parties involved with the sale, or a purchase. Confidentiality, Trust, Experience and Diligence are required for any successful completed transaction. Jim will bring all of these to the table for you, your company, and your stakeholders.

David Newell has over 40+ years of financial experience in commercial and investment banking. Initially trained as a commercial lender, David gravitated to the Asset/Liability side of a major regional bank and dealt with the buying and selling of the bank’s loan portfolio. Subsequently he was asked by the Union Planters Bank (NYSE: UPC) to develop and manage the bank’s Trust business within its community bank network. David was the only officer outside of the Memphis headquarters authorized to accept fiduciary business for the bank in both personal and corporate trust matters. In this role he became very familiar in dealing with business owners exit strategies and the proper management of the sales proceeds post transaction. He served as Trustee for several large leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and in all cases was asked to make presentations to the employees on the rights, benefits, and importance of employee ownership whether the transaction be qualified or non-qualified.

Paul Schorkopf has over 30 years’ experience in the Financial Markets, starting as a specialist on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and continuing into the futures markets in New York and Chicago, and in Mortgage Back Securities and Asset Backed origination on Wall Street. Paul also worked as an award-winning engineer for Dell and Verizon. In 2002 Paul and his family moved to Brentwood, Tennessee. To teach their three sons how to run their own business, Paul worked with them to restore a 1969 Good Humor Ice Cream truck. Paul is customer focused, and believes integrity is at the core of all successful transactions.

Ed Legum is the author of two books: How to Get What your Business is Worth, ‘Our Road Map to Selling Your Business shows you every step’ and also Being a Business Broker, The Art of Communicating with Buyers and Sellers. In addition, he teaches many other Brokers through webinars on a variety of well know Business Broker Associations. So, you might say he is an expert on the subject. Ed has consulted with businesses throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to help them increase the productivity of their five key resources: (1) people: how to train and transform customer service, salespeople, and managers into top producers, (2) product: how to find a competitive edge through pricing, packaging, and management of products and services, (3) place: how to improve what customers see and experience, (4) promotion: how to find and stimulate new customers to buy from you, and (5) processes: how to give your people the systems they need to get the job done. His 45 years of business experience has given him insight and perspective. Testimonials