Corporate Advisory Solutions (CAS) is honored to be celebrating their 10-year anniversary!
Said Michael Lamm, Managing Partner, “When Mark Russell, Managing Partner, and I started CAS all those years ago, we took the “polar bear plunge” into business ownership and never looked back. We told ourselves we are going to build a firm that has a great culture, with transparency at its core, and is centered on offering clients our quality services. Those values of hard work, integrity, and focus have gotten us where we are today, and they will continue to help us evolve and grow.
“We could not be prouder of everything we have accomplished these last ten years and look forward to serving our clients and the tech-enabled outsourced business services vertical for many more decades to come!
“Speaking of innovative ways to serve our clients, we are proud to announce the launch of our exciting new service, Exit Prep. Anyone who has been watching Succession on HBO (erm, we mean Max), knows the drama that can ensue when it is time for the company’s founder or CEO to move on. We can help you avoid that! If you are interested in learning more about how you can best position your business for succession or a sale, please reach out.
“While it comes as no surprise, Q1 2023 did not bring the best news for the OBS sector. Economic uncertainty, policy changes, and rising interest rates caused M&A activity to slow down. But don’t despair just yet. Our team of experts predicts that the tide will soon turn, and we will witness a surge of deals in the next 6-12 months.
“There are a few elements backing up this prediction. The way we see it, companies will either accept the current reality of the economic environment—and therefore seller expectations will rationalize, and they’ll proceed with M&A events—or we will get back to an environment where interest rates stop hiking with regularity. We recognize the potential for one last rate hike in May but anticipate that it will be followed by a period of holding steady. There is undoubtedly pent-up M&A demand, and if our predictions hold true, it is just a matter of time before we return to some “Goldilocks” conditions.
“However, the banking contagion (the second and third largest by asset value bank failures) that dominated headlines in March 2023 created another wrinkle. Now, traditional institutions that provide lending support to finance M&A activities are facing a challenge. Smaller banks are seeing large outflows of money as depositors flock toward what they deem to be “too big to fail” institutions.
“Though one might assume the net effect on the banking sector would be neutral, smaller banks are facing extreme pressure to retain deposits and fund loans/investments/etc. In other words, the credit crunch has commenced. We will delve deeply into how this may affect the ARM, CRM, and RCM sectors further down in our newsletter.”
For the full PDF version of 2023 Q1 M&A Insights newsletter, click here.