Jun 30, 2021
Kenneth H. Marks is the Founder and Managing Partner of High Rock Partners, a boutique firm providing M&A and strategic advisory services to middle-market companies. Prior to founding High Rock Partners, he served as the President of JPS Communications, Inc. Kenneth also founded and grew the engineering and electronic manufacturing company Kenmar Business Groups, Inc., to $22 million in revenue while serving as the President and CEO during the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Kenneth is the co-author of many books, including Middle Market M&A: Handbook for Investment Banking and Business Consulting; The Handbook of Financing Growth: Strategies, Capital Structure, and M&A Transactions; and Value Levers: Increase the Value of Your Business From 3x to 7x. Kenneth is a Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor, has a background in electrical engineering, and holds an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In this episode...
The pandemic disrupted the business-as-usual model in many sectors, including mergers and acquisitions. As business leaders are emerging from lockdown, so is the market. If M&A is part of your strategy — as a path to growth or as an exit — how should you adjust your thinking as the economy emerges from the pandemic? Kenneth H. Marks talks about this and more as he joins Thomas A. Stewart on The Leading Edge — a place where new ideas emerge and are sharpened, and where leaders look to find the edge that brings success for themselves, their teams, and their enterprises.
According to Kenneth H. Marks, a certified M&A Advisor and co-author of Middle Market M&A, we’re in a potentially hot deal environment where there’s a great deal of capital looking for places to invest as well as some pent-up demand to sell. Nevertheless, the market is still uncertain; valuations are unclear, and trends are hard to read. In this kind of environment, Kenneth says, companies need to understand their personal and corporate objectives — which might not be identical — and be ruthlessly honest about their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In this type of climate, personal and company clarity are more valuable than ever, as personal objectives and company objectives can sometimes diverge. Stay tuned!