M&A ADVISORY
Advisory for every stage of growth, acquisition, and exit.
We run three kinds of mandate for middle-market sponsors, owners, and family offices: buying companies, selling them, and financing them. One senior lead takes the brief and owns the file through to close, including the final negotiation.
WHAT WE RUN
Three mandates, each run by one senior lead.
Buy-Side Advisory
Where capital should be deployed, which targets fit the thesis, and what the evidence says about price. Market intelligence sets the mandate, sourcing follows it, and financial diligence tests the specific asset before price or structure is fixed.
Sell-Side Advisory
Exit readiness first, then positioning, the buyer list, outreach, and negotiation. The process is run so the business keeps performing while it is being sold. A company that misses its numbers during a process loses part of the agreed price at the confirmatory stage.
Capital Raising
Senior debt through minority equity, structured to fund the plan the company has committed to rather than to reach the largest number a lender will quote. Recapitalizations, growth equity, and EB-5 where a project qualifies for it.
THE DIFFERENCE
The firm includes transaction advisers and a technology operator.
Bass Zanjani leads M&A Advisory and owns the mandate from the first meeting through close. Senior attention is the offer on this side of the firm, so the file does not get handed down to an associate once the engagement letter is signed.
Sujit Maharana leads Technology & AI and has held the CTO and CISO seats through a full hold and exit. Where a target's earnings depend on its systems, data, or security posture, one firm can review both the financial and the operating side. The client does not have to brief a second adviser from scratch.
The two practices are bought and scoped separately. Either one can be hired alone. When a client uses both, the handoff happens inside one firm, at the point in a deal where the financial questions become technical ones.
Who we work with
BUY-SIDE INTELLIGENCE
We test the deployment thesis against private-market data.
Before a target list exists, we test the deployment thesis against private-market evidence. Which subsectors fit the mandate on growth, return, and risk. Where returns have been weak or losses common. What comparable assets transacted on. Whether the value-creation plan rests on observed drivers or on multiple expansion nobody can account for.
The analysis directs the work that follows. It sets what we pursue, what we filter out, and which questions have to be answered before a target advances to financial diligence or a technology read.
It informs the recommendation and it does not replace it. Benchmark context is not an automated recommendation, it does not substitute for diligence on the specific company, and it does not guarantee investment performance.
HOW A BUY-SIDE MANDATE RUNS
Five phases, and we report at the end of each one.
- 01
Market intelligence and capital deployment
We test where capital should go, where returns have been weak, and what risk has to be priced. We then write the deployment view and the underwriting constraints that follow from it.
Checkpoint: a capital-deployment view, a written investment thesis, and the underwriting constraints.
- 02
Opportunity sourcing and origination
Either we screen in-market opportunities shared through CCA relationships against the thesis, or we run a retained search that creates proprietary deal flow. We agree the route with the client.
Checkpoint: a reasoned screening decision, or a live pipeline with advance and stop rationale on every name.
- 03
Financial Due Diligence
Revenue quality, earnings quality, cash conversion, customer concentration, working capital, and the factual basis for any synergy assumption, tested against the specific asset rather than the sector.
Checkpoint: a revised financial view, a valuation range, and the diligence issues priced into the deal.
- 04
Technology diligence, where it is material
Where systems, data, cybersecurity, AI, or integration risk affect the durability of the earnings, the questions go to Technology & AI Assess. Many mandates never reach this phase. A conclusion that technology is not material to the earnings is itself a finding.
Checkpoint: a pre-close technology risk view and the first hundred days of technology priorities, where required.
- 05
Investment decision, negotiation, and close
Market, financial, and technology findings are combined into one investment case. Each issue is resolved as price, structure, indemnities, escrow, or a walk-away. Those decisions are made before the final week rather than during it.
Checkpoint: signed documents and a first-hundred-days plan built from the findings.
SECTOR EXPERTISE
Four sectors where the diligence questions are already familiar.
Sector knowledge is applied inside a mandate rather than sold as a separate service. It means the team knows which questions matter before anyone asks them.
Software and Tech-Enabled
Recurring revenue and retention, product and engineering capacity, AI and data readiness, and whether the architecture supports the growth the model assumes.
Healthcare and Med-Tech
Regulatory exposure, reimbursement and payer concentration, data and security posture, and the operating complexity that sits behind a margin plan.
Industrial
Asset intensity, maintenance practice and throughput, operational technology exposure where plant systems are connected, and where margin improvement comes from.
Business Services
Customer concentration, labor and process scalability, commercial repeatability, and how cleanly an add-on integrates into the platform.
TECHNOLOGY & AI
The handoff happens after financial diligence is complete.
Financial diligence establishes how a target earns its revenue. Where the answer depends on systems, data, cybersecurity, AI, or an integration the thesis assumes, those questions go to the Technology & AI practice as a deliberate step in the mandate.
The technology lead receives the investment thesis and the diligence questions CCA has already developed. The client does not re-brief a separate consultant. The technology findings come back priced as capital expenditure, EBITDA drag, and exit exposure rather than as a risk register.
Technology & AI is separately scoped with its own engagement letter. A buy-side mandate does not require it, and a technology assessment does not require an M&A mandate.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What clients ask before sending a mandate.
- Who runs the mandate?
Bass Zanjani, Managing Director, leads M&A Advisory and owns the file from the first meeting through close. Bass takes the first call and works the mandate directly, without handing it to an associate.
- What size transactions do you work on?
Middle market and lower middle market, on both sides of a deal. The test we apply is whether senior attention on the file changes the outcome. Below the deal size where a large bank staffs a deal properly, it usually does.
- Is the Technology & AI practice required on a deal?
No. It is a separate practice with its own engagement letter, and most buy-side mandates never trigger it. We bring it in when systems, data, security, or an assumed integration affect price, downside protection, or the value-creation plan. We say so at the point the question arises, rather than bundling it into the mandate up front.
- What does the market intelligence work cover?
It covers where capital can work in the subsector, where returns have been weak or losses common, and what comparable assets have transacted on. It also tests whether the value-creation plan is supported by observed drivers. It is used to set and challenge the thesis before outreach starts. It is not a market report we sell separately, and it does not replace diligence on the specific company.
- Can you run both sides of a deal?
Not on the same transaction. A buy-side mandate and a sell-side mandate are separate engagements for separate clients, and we will tell you if a conflict exists before we take the brief.
- How is this priced?
It depends on the mandate and it is agreed in writing before work starts. We do not publish fees on this website, because the terms belong in the engagement letter rather than in marketing copy.
Send a mandate
Tell us what you are buying, financing, or selling.
A few lines is enough: the acquisition you are working on, the capital the plan needs, or the exit you are preparing for. We will tell you whether it is work we can run and what the first month looks like.
Bass reads every brief. If the mandate is not one we can run well, we will say so rather than take it.