ACG South Florida Fall M&A Series: Closing M&A Deals in Todays Environment

John Majer is as a tax partner with RSM, the largest U.S. provider of audit, tax and consulting services focused on the middle market. John provides advisory services to private equity firms and their portfolio companies including due diligence investigations, pre and post transaction planning, tax consulting, and tax compliance.  He has extensive tax experience with publicly held and privately held corporations in the healthcare, industrial and consumer product industries.  John is a CPA, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Penn State University, and an MBA in Accounting from LaSalle University.

Mr. Carrizosa serves as Executive Managing Director at WM Partners and has been with the firm since inception. Mr. Carrizosa has more than 28 years of experience structuring, funding, and conducting due diligence on M&A transactions across the US and Latin America. His work has spanned a broad range of industries, including health and wellness, media and telecommunications. To date, Mr. Carrizosa has been involved in transactions worth an aggregate of more than US $2.8 billion. Prior to WM Partners, Mr. Carrizosa was an M&A advisor, and served as an advisor to many high net worth individuals. Between 1995 and 1999, Mr. Carrizosa led a boutique investment bank in Colombia where he was involved in a wide range of transactions in the manufacturing, technology, media, and telecommunications industries with major US and European investment banks and private equity funds. During that time, he worked on the creation of the joint venture between Telemundo, NBC, and GE to create the second largest telenovela television producer in the world at that time. Previously, Mr. Carrizosa served in numerous managerial roles at a Colombian industrial conglomerate, including as the CFO of multiple service and manufacturing operations. 

Mr. Carrizosa holds a Finance and Decision Sciences degree from The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Frank Hapak is a Vice President at Trivest Partners, a private investment firm that focuses on partnering with founder and family-owned businesses in the United States and Canada.  Since its founding in 1981, Trivest has completed over 350 transactions, totaling over $7 billion in value.  Frank currently works with Trivest portfolio companies Fortress Brand, BCC Engineering, GAL Power, Total Power and Oil Changers. 

Prior to joining Trivest, Frank worked for Carousel Capital and Piper Jaffray & Co.  Frank received his B.B.A. from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Mr. Bivins is a Principal at AE Industrial and is primarily focused on financial modeling, due diligence and executing new investments along with monitoring portfolio, investment strategy and deal origination. He currently sits on the board of AE Industrial’s portfolio companies: Resolute Industrial and AMPAC. Prior to joining AE Industrial in 2015, Mr. Bivins was an Associate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Leveraged Finance Group, where he executed transactions primarily in the industrial sector. Prior to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Mr. Bivins was a Financial Analyst and Contracts Negotiator at Lockheed Martin. Mr. Bivins holds an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business and a BS in Finance from the University of Central Florida.