M&A advisory · Lower middle market

You built something people count on.

Families, employees, and a whole community depend on it.

When it's time for your next chapter, you deserve an experienced team on your side of the table.

Cordis GlobalConfidential · By appointment
Who we serve

The companies a community is built on.

Founder-owned and family-held, from $5M to $250M in revenue. The businesses that quietly keep a region working, and the families behind them.

The other side of the table

We sat where the buyer sits. We can tell you what they will do.

The people who will price your company spent their careers on the other side of this table: Wall Street, private equity, and exit planning inside one of the largest wealth managers in the world. We know the model a buyer runs before the first meeting, the question their accountant asks on day forty, and the retrade that arrives after the letter of intent. Not because we studied it. Because we were the ones doing it.

The negotiating table, seen from the side the buyer sits on
Published in
Forbes · Fast Company
Research
Peer-reviewed, dated, on SSRN
The method
Buyer-Ready · The Off-Market Method
Backgrounds
Wall Street · AllianceBernstein
What We Do

Three ways the firm is engaged, and the work that carries past the wire.

Each engagement is scoped in writing, carries a named partner, and ends on a date. Readiness stands on its own, and leads to a mandate only when the numbers say it should.

Readiness

Cordis MRI


What each buyer lane would pay today, what the gap is worth, and the sequence that closes it.

Sell Side

Going to market


Four stages, weighted to preparation. The first two complete before the market hears anything.

Buy Side

Growth by acquisition


A thesis, a proprietary search into companies that are not listed, and a fee fixed before the first approach.

Post-Close

After the wire


Seller notes, earnouts, escrow, and the planning the proceeds now have to carry.

The Cordis simulation engine. Ten thousand outcomes run lane by lane, returning the ceiling, the median and the floor.
The Cordis MRI

The number comes from the buyer's arithmetic, not an opinion.

Before any process begins, the owner's own file is run through the underwriting model of every buyer lane ten thousand times, returning the whole distribution rather than a single number. The floor is the number we defend, and the number below which the client walks.

See the Cordis MRI
Ron Smith speaking on a panel
New in Forbes · Editor's Choice
Not every fix is worth making before you sell. Which gaps to close, for which buyer, and which to leave alone.
Ron Smith, Founding Partner · Forbes Business Council

The frameworks the firm is built on, published under institutional byline, each one dated, numbered and open to challenge. The Institute writes in public so the work can be argued with.

Read the research
The team

The partner who prices it carries it.

Deliberately small and senior. There is no junior team the client never meets, and no handoff from the pitch to the people who do the work.

Ron Smith

Ron Smith

Founding Partner · CM&AA®

Grew up inside the family HVAC business, then Wall Street capital formation and exit planning at AllianceBernstein. Head of Research at the Cordis Institute.

Full profile & Q&A →
Chris Rossi

Chris Rossi

Senior Vice President

Nearly a decade on Wall Street, close to capital formation, then businesses of his own. He advises founders and families through growth, capital and ownership transitions.

Full profile & Q&A →

One call, no charge. A read of the situation, and an honest recommendation.

A mandate, a study, or the name of somebody better suited. We take a mandate only where we can materially improve the outcome, and finding out costs nothing.