To our clients and friends,
2024 started a bit slow for the M&A market but came on strong in the second half. Seward & Kissel’s clients engaged in a wide variety of transactions around the globe involving interesting businesses in diverse industries. We were busy, helping them to complete important deals, and the pipeline of activity for 2025 looks to be very active.
Representative of Seward & Kissel’s primary industry focus, deals involving the purchase or sale of investment management firms, broker-dealers and other strategic transactions in the financial services industry were once again the largest portion of the 2024 work of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group. This Year in Review highlights a selection of these transactions, including two wealth management industry acquisitions for AlTi Global (Nasdaq:ALTI), three investment manager minority stake investments by Kudu Investment Management and one by iM Global Partner, the sale of The Investment Center to LPL Financial, the sale of Source Financial to Savant Wealth Management and a minority stake investment in wealth manager Riverbridge by Lincoln Peak Capital. The Firm also continued to have market leading activity handling seed and accelerator investment transactions related to fund managers, with our Seed Transaction Deal Points Study setting the industry standard for these deals. Our IM Deals blog, which follows transactions and developments involving the investment management industry, continues to be widely read by participants in the sector.
Private equity deals are another area of consistent work for the Mergers & Acquisitions Group, with our team handling multiple transactions in diverse industries for private equity sponsor clients like Growth Catalyst Partners and Estancia Capital Partners, and their portfolio companies. Other M&A activity included three acquisitions of accounting and services businesses by outsourcing firm Stable Rock Solutions, three dispositions of media businesses by Delinian and the de-SPAC merger of cybersecurity company Cycurion. In addition, our investment fund and other clients pursued numerous venture capital, growth stage and other private investment transactions in a wide variety of businesses.
Shipping industry transactions were also part of the mix in 2024 consistent with the Firm’s leading position in that sector, with this Review highlighting the combination of the dry bulk fleets of clients Pangaea Logistics Solutions (Nasdaq:PANL) and Strategic Shipping Inc. and the sale of Penfield Marine to Maersk Tankers.
The work of Seward & Kissel’s Mergers & Acquisitions Group continued to receive independent recognition during 2024. Chambers and Partners, in its 2024 USA Guide, ranked Seward & Kissel as Highly Regarded for Corporate/M&A, saying the firm is “particularly adept at sell-side and midmarket transactions,” is “recognized for its cross-border capabilities,” and “often advises clients working in [the] investment management and shipping industr[ies].” Likewise, The Legal 500, in its United States 2024 edition, recommended Seward & Kissel for middle-market M&A work, describing the team as being “praised for being ‘sensible and reasonable in its approach to negotiation’” and the “popular address for clients from the financial services sector, such as investment management firms and broker-dealers, as well as for shipping and offshore wind companies.”
