MME FINANCE: Insights and trends transforming the finance function inside lower middle market businesses.

PwC Says Ambitious Growth Objectives Became Innovation Trigger for Middle-Market Firms

By on April 11, 2013 in Finance

  As more privately held companies escalate their investments in sales and marketing, new innovative initiatives are beginning to mushroom across the lower middle market. Middle-Market Executive recently spoke to Ken Esch, a partner with PwC’s Private Company Services practice, who shared some recent insights from PwC’s Trendsetter Barometer — a quarterly study that tracks [...]

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Lower Middle-Market Firms Remain Bullish on Economy

By on April 8, 2013 in Finance

  As we enter 2013′s second quarter, middle-market business leaders continue to echo a bold new sentiment, according to Middle Market Executive’s 2013 Growth Study Optimism is clearly the word that best sums up a number of the 2013 Growth Study’s key findings. According to the study, 92 percent of lower-middle-market firms surveyed expect to [...]

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When It Comes to Middle-Market Growth, Grant Thornton’s CEO Has China on His Mind

By on March 28, 2013 in Finance

  Nearly 4 years ago, when Stephen Chipman was named CEO of Grant Thornton LLP, his global credentials certainly appeared impressive — but perhaps not necessarily essential for a leader tasked with overseeing the U.S.-based operations of a professional services firm. After all, what would an executive most recently charged with building the accounting house’s [...]

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Once Forbidden, Optimism Returns to the Middle-Market’s Growth-Minded Business Leaders

By on February 25, 2013 in Finance

  As 2013’s first calendar quarter unwinds, middle-market business leaders have begun to echo a bold new sentiment — or at least one seldom heard in recent years. Middle-market watcher Bill Fink, EVP and chief lending officer at TD Bank, doesn’t hesitate to use the word “optimism” when characterizing the new business sentiment. Armed with [...]

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As Tax Reforms Trickle Through, Middle-Market Firms Find Them Bitter to the Taste

By on February 7, 2013 in Finance

  One month after the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) became law, business leader sentiment towards the new reforms is yet to thaw — especially inside the lower middle market, where the law’s impact arguably is being most deeply felt. Grant Thornton partner Mel Schwarz, director of tax legislative Affairs in the firm’s national tax [...]

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Capital Markets Survey Predicts Slow Growth for 2013 IPOs, Although Seeds of Optimism Linger Inside Lower Middle Market

By on January 14, 2013 in Finance

  As the year begins to unfold, capital market watchers appear to be cautiously optimistic when it comes to 2013’s IPO landscape, including IPO activities at lower-middle-market companies. Brian Eccleston, Middle Market IPO watcher and a partner in the Capital Markets Practice of BDO USA, recently shared with Middle Market Executive some of the findings [...]

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The Promise of Top-Line Growth Lures More Middle-Market Firms Offshore

By on December 21, 2012 in Finance

  Having steadily expanded offshore to better access low-cost talent, lower middle-market companies have increasingly discovered yet another reason to expand internationally: top-line growth. MME recently caught up with Brian Hughes, national leader of KPMG’s middle-market practice, and asked him how the growing appetite for global growth is likely to reshape lower-middle-market companies. Here’s what [...]

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Middle-Market Executives Long for Growth as Uncertainty Casts Pall Over New Year

By on December 19, 2012 in Finance

  As 2012 draws to a close, business observers have offered few uplifting points of view when it comes to the outlook on middle-market business sentiment in 2013. Cindy Crotty, middle market business watcher and head of KeyBank’s commercial banking segment, recently shared with Middle Market Executive some of the findings from a recent KeyBank [...]

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At the Center of Things: A Talk with Doug Farren of the National Center for the Middle Market

By on December 10, 2012 in Finance

  It wasn’t too long ago that Doug Farren’s main purpose for perusing Ohio’s State Columbus campus was to snare promising supply chain talent on behalf of one of the school’s corporate neighbors (and Farren’s employer), Limited Brands. Today, Farren’s mission is to draw talent to the campus or rather to the National Center for [...]

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A Growth-Company Visionary Tells Middle-Market Services Providers to Go Deep to Grow Big

By on December 3, 2012 in Finance

  Doug Tatum — consultancy builder, author, private equity investor, and the person few others can match when it comes to articulating the enormity of middle-market business opportunities — now wants you to know how terribly small the middle market is. It may seem like a major incongruity for an executive to have in the [...]

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