Lou Banach, co-managing director, Schenck M&A Solutions
Name: Lou Banach
Title: Co-managing director, Schenck M&A Solutions
Company: Schenck Business Solutions
City of Residence: Waukesha
Family: "Wife, Kim; married 24 years with three children. Kim is a retired RN, CCRN nurse. We have two daughters, Lauren and Alexandra, 17 and 15, respectively, and a son, Jared, who is 11."
How does the market look to you? "I am an optimist, so my bias is to focus on the positives and leverage strengths, both personally and professionally. While local economic trends remain uncertain, we are seeing some good opportunities for relatively strong companies to plan for growth and identify and make carefully targeted acquisitions that will close later this year. We are also helping more struggling companies with business and financial planning. In our practice, we continue to focus on how Schenck can be an even better M&A advisory firm. By leveraging our strengths, paying close attention to where there are pockets of untapped opportunities and delivering excellent results, we will be even stronger tomorrow than today."
What are you working on now? “A key focus over the past few months has been strategic and business planning for owners considering selling and expecting a fair price. More than just advising on how to best execute a transaction, we are advising business owners how to use a down market to improve and position their businesses to ‘unlock value.’ There are a number of potential areas for improvement, and we help identify and eliminate the ‘value detractors,’ even before running an effective process to identify several interested buyers. We are also engaged in various buy-side opportunities, primarily with companies financially positioned to be consolidators in their industries."
What was the best deal you’ve been involved in? "Every deal in today’s market is the best deal! Seriously, each deal is special in its own way, given the diversity of personalities and the unique opportunities to be creative in structuring solutions among the interested parties."
What was the funniest or most interesting moment of your career? "Years ago, my daughters asked me what type of work I did. Rather than provide the technical label, Asset Based Lending (ABL), I used the ‘short-hand’ description of ‘work-out lending.’ Both thought it was pretty cool that I got paid to go to the gym."
