John Emory Jr. president and CEO of Emory & Co., LLC
Name: John Emory Jr.
Title: President & CEO
Company: Emory & Co., LLC
City of Residence: Milwaukee
Family: I’m happily married to Laura Emory. We have a three-year old daughter and are expecting a son this June.
How does the market look to you? I am cautiously optimistic about the market for the stocks of publicly traded and privately held companies. Most of our clients’ companies are still performing well, and companies involved in exporting are benefitting from the weak U.S. dollar. I continue to see very strong desire and ability of buyers—both private equity groups and strategic buyers—to pay high prices for good companies. Both of these buyer groups have strong balance sheets and are looking for ways to profitably invest their cash.
What are you working on now? I am working hard on closing the sales of two local middle-market private companies, both of which have signed letters of intent with buyers and are in the final stages of due diligence. We have already closed four successful transactions in 2008, so we expect to have a record year already completed by the end of May.
What was the best deal you’ve been involved in? A business owner had considered selling his company to management for approximately $12 million, but then decided to hire my team to market the company, and four months later we closed a transaction where our client received $45 million in an all cash deal. Needless to say, he and his family were thrilled.
What was the funniest or most interesting moment of your career? As the President (USA) Beijing-based Asia-Pacific CEO Association, I was in China, giving a speech on mergers & acquisitions, which was simultaneously translated into Chinese. I was also asked to give the introductory speech at the conference, without any prior warning that I was to be the speaker, and I later learned that my introduction was briefly on China’s main evening T.V. news.
