History of Chapter Awards

Peter Hilton Award

In the early 1950s, a small group of business executives met regularly for lunch in New York City. Theirs was an informal and closed group of senior leaders concerned with how best to grow their companies. Most of them liked the meetings that way, small and familiar. One member, Peter Hilton, saw it differently. Mr. Hilton had a vision and became the driving force behind a larger, more formalized organization. He suggested the original name, the Association for Corporate Growth and Diversification, Inc., which was incorporated in 1957. It mirrored in part the name of Mr. Hilton’s firm, Corporate Diversification, Ltd., of New York.

Internal growth was the focus of many meetings in New York. Acquisition as a way to grow is less well documented. But Mr. Hilton was a thought leader who preached about the importance of acquisitions of fully developed products, product lines, and subsidiaries—what he termed “fractional acquisitions”—as the newest and fastest-growing area of corporate growth in the early 1970s. “These are much easier to effect than a corporate acquisition and can be just as sizable in sales volume and earning potential,” said Mr.Hilton at the first InterGrowth speech in 1972. “They rarely involve the government. They rarely involve stockholder approval; they can be acquired for cash or stock or both. They can be acquired with or without real estate; with or without personnel, union obligations, and many of the other encumbrances of the corporate acquisition or even the joint venture… This is one segment of diversification that can no longer be ignored.” Thus, in 2011, the Peter Hilton Award became the first award presented by ACG NY to honor the dedication, drive, and success that Peter Hilton had in the M&A industry and ACG NY.

Previous Honorees: Bobby Blumenfeld , Burt Alimansky, Pam Hendrickson, Ken Kencel, John Castle, David Solomon, Alan Gelband

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Chapter Leadership Award

This award was created in 2013, two years after the first presentation of the Peter Hilton Award. The thought behind this award was that there were people in our chapter who significantly contributed to the NY Chapter and went above and beyond to support the chapter’s growth and development, to contribute to the chapter’s strategic programming and initiatives, to recruit and retain members, and to help the NY chapter remain a leader amongst chapters. So the focus was more about an individual’s leadership and dedication to the chapter itself, not necessarily to the industry.

Previous Winners: Steve Prostor, Bob Landis, Rich Prestegaard, Marty Okner, Heidi Deiner

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Lou Halstead Women of Leadership Award

In 2016, the Women of Leadership was created to honor women who had an impact in middle market M&A and more specifically, women who helped raise the profile for women in the industry. The following year, the award was re-named to the Lou Halstead Women of Leadership award, recognizing one of WOL’s biggest supporters, Lou Halstead.

Previous Winners: Michelle Van Hellemont, Marcia Nelson