Fresh Profile: Independent sponsor Blackmore Partners talent focused investment strategy

Blackmore Partners, a Chicago-based independent sponsor, prides itself in going after talent rather than focusing on a specific industry, deal Partner Yelena Edelstein told Buyouts.

“We don’t specialize in any industry. We identify talent,” said Edelstein, who joined Blackmore Partners in 2015 after spending over a year at private equity firm Amicus Capital Partners. “We believe that talent is the most important element of an investment strategy.”

Blackmore Partners was founded in 2005 to “form strategic partnerships with existing management teams.”

The firm partners with operating executives on proprietary deals, who eventually take on leadership positions on management teams post acquisition or join the board, Edelstein said.

“We do a lot of diligence prior to the letter of intent,” she said. “When we bring our partners into the deal there’s a lot information there.”

Blackmore Partners seeks out companies with Ebitda of $2 million to $25 million. Edelstein said the firm’s sweet spot is between $3 million to $8 million, but it can be less depending on the strategy it adopts.

In 2017, Blackmore, alongside Kidd & Company, the private investment firm of Kidd family office who sponsored the deal, created Logistyx Technologies, a platform company that specializes in transportation management for parcel shipping software and services.

Blackmore combined eight companies under Advanced Distribution Solutions, Inc., Agile Network, and Pantechnik International to create Logistyx Technologies.

The Logistyx Technologies deal won the 2018 Association of Corporation Growth deal of the year award for technology, media and telecommunications, said Edelstein, who credits Blackmore’s “buy, build and grow” strategy for the win.

Edelstein, who played an important role in the transaction, said that market conditions called for such a deal due to the competitiveness of private equity.

“These transactions are not popular, small companies aren’t getting as much competition,” Edelstein said.