Central Florida M&A: An Inside Look at Selling Your Company

Bill Bucher recently retired as CFO of Kroger Specialty Pharmacy, a large national specialty pharmacy, infusion, and pharmacy benefit management company headquartered in Lake Mary, Florida. He started with KSP’s legacy company, Axium Health Care Pharmacy nearly 11 years ago as EVP & CFO.  He was successful in merging his private equity backed company with The Kroger Company at the end of 2012.  In addition to the CFO role, Bill also served as the company’s COO from 2010 to 2013.  During his tenure, annual revenue grew from less than $50 million to nearly $3 billion and the number of employees expanded from 80 to over 1,200. 

Bill has 30 years of diverse industry experience in financial management, operations and leadership, along with over 15 years of CFO experience with multiple companies in all stages of growth, including start up, high-growth, maturity, decline, and bankruptcy dissolution.  Immediately prior to KSP, he served as the CFO for Alliant Pharmaceuticals, Inc. an early-stage pediatric pharmaceutical company that successfully sold to a larger publicly traded company.  In addition to his CFO experience, he has 8 years of health care consulting experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a practice leader, Ernst & Young as a consulting manager, and as a partner with Tatum, a CFO services firm.  Throughout his career, he has been involved in over 25 M&A transactions with combined revenues exceeding $3 billion. 

Bill earned his MBA with emphasis in Finance from Old Dominion University and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in General Business from the University of Wyoming.  He serves on the Board of Directors as a past president of the Association for Corporate Growth Orlando Chapter and he has served on the Board of the Orlando Economic Partnership.  In addition to being licensed as a Certified Public Accountant, he is also a Certified Management Accountant and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. 

Bill has been married for nearly 32 years and has 2 grown daughters. 

Rob Panepinto is an innovator who has always challenged the status quo of “good enough”. Rob has helped Orange County become a hub for technology, entrepreneurship, and creativity. He is passionate about the positive impact businesses and business leaders drive for their communities and is an active “civic entrepreneur” serving on multiple civic and nonprofit boards.

Rob Panepinto is President of Florentine Strategies, which provides board support, strategic consulting, and investment capital for healthcare, social enterprise and technology companies. Rob is also the CEO of Entrepreneurs in Action, who manage a social venture fund that invests in local social enterprises, helping them create successful businesses and jobs while addressing community and global social needs.

Rob is a Founder and Board Chair of Orlando’s Social Enterprise Accelerator, Rally, a partnership between the Central Florida Foundation, Rollins College, the City of Orlando, and other community partners. Rob is the current Chair of the Central Florida Foundation board, immediate past chair of Orlando, Inc. and is a Board Member member for the Orlando Economic Partnership. He also serves on the Board of Stater Studio, Rollins’ Crummer Graduate School of Business Board of Overseers and its Rollins Center for Advanced Entrepreneurship. He has served on the Operations Committee of the Central Florida Expressway Authority.

Rob was a 2018 candidate for Orange County Mayor.

Previously, Rob was part of the founding executive team for Connextions, helping them grow from a small manufacturing company to become an innovative healthcare technology and services company based here in Orlando. Connextions was sold to Optum in 2011.

Rob has been married to his wife Stacy for over 27 years and they have 2 daughters, Ali (17) and Samantha (15). They live in Winter Park.

Mr. Santana co-founded and grew Vista Clinical Diagnostics to become a preeminent independent laboratory services company, offering the industry’s most advanced testing, with dozens of retail laboratories across the state of Florida.  Under his leadership, the company grew at an average rate of 65% annually for 13 years.  Vista also provides mobile testing services to individuals and 230 skilled nursing homes and assisted living facilities throughout Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana.  In November 2017, Mr. Santana sold the retail portion of the company to LabCorp, one of the nation’s largest medical testing companies.  Mr. Santana also serves as a Board Director for the Central Florida Disaster Medical Coalition.  He is a graduate of the University of West Florida and served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman at the Naval Hospital in San Diego.

Mr. Stanton has over 25 years of experience in the growth of clinical research companies and is a renowned consultant and sought-after expert in the clinical trials industry, where he coaches research center executives in innovative techniques in the management and methodology of clinical research.  He co-founded Compass Research and oversaw the company’s 10 consecutive years of growth, before selling the company to Bioclinica in 2016.  Previously in his career, Mr. Stanton co-founded Clinical Neuroscience Solutions (CNS Healthcare), where he served as Chief Operating Officer and managed clinical research teams in 4 cities throughout the Southeast.  Prior to that, he held numerous pre-clinical and clinical research positions at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.  Mr. Stanton holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Workman has over 35 years of experience in the healthcare industry – practicing, developing, acquiring, and managing more than 170 dental facilities. He founded Heartland Dental in 1997 and grew it into the largest Dental Support Organization (DSO) in the United States, which now support over 1,400 dentists and over 11,000 team members in nearly 900 offices nationwide. He was instrumental in the nationwide establishment and integration of internal systems within dental practices to ensure the highest possible standard of care. Dr. Workman partnered with New Harbor Capital Management to grow and sell Heartland Dental, serving as the company’s CEO through 2015. Dr. Workman received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and his company was recognized as one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 500 fastest growing companies in 2003. He was named Dental Executive of the Year by Excellence in Dentistry in 2004 and was ranked the #2 most influential person in dentistry by Incisal Edge in 2016. He continues to serve as the Executive Chairman for Heartland Dental and also serves as an Executive Advisor for New Harbor Capital Management. Dr. Workman is a member of the American Dental Association, American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, American Academy of Dental Group Practices, Chicago Dental Society, Illinois State Dental Society, Young President’s Organization and 49’ers, World President’s Organization, Clay City Excellence in Education Foundation, and Effingham County Community Foundation. He holds a Doctorate in Dental Medicine from the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine.