Meet Our Inaugural Award Winners

Meet Our ACG Pittsburgh Inaugural M&A Excellence Award Winners

ACG Pittsburgh will host its first M&A Excellence Awards Dinner on March 7th. The awards dinner will recognize and celebrate excellence in dealmaking and the middle-market community across our region. Join us for a night of recognition, celebration, and inspiration, bringing together our vibrant network of executives, business leaders, M&A professionals, advisors, strategic planners, and capital sources.

Join us as we recognize the following honorees:

Lifetime Achievement Award: Jack Glover

Incline Equity Partners

Jack Glover is the founder and Managing Partner of Incline Equity Partners. With a 30-plus year career in private equity, Jack has helped build and foster numerous successful companies across the middle market in distribution, business services and manufacturing with the same enthusiasm he puts into CrossFit, skiing, fast cars and his family. Through his strategic vision and leadership, Incline has become widely recognized as a leading middle market buyout firm. Before establishing Incline, Jack spent 15 years at PNC Equity Partners. He began his career at Westinghouse Credit Corp. and then spent time in the investment banking division of Wheat First Securities.

Jack is passionate about the future of investing and dedicates time and resources to helping prepare students as they matriculate into the real world. He received a B.S. with honors from Duquesne University. In fall of 2016, Jack helped to fund and support the Duquesne Micro-Cap Fund, a student-run fund that invests in small public companies. He also received an M.B.A. from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he currently serves as a council member for the Booth Polinsky Private Equity Council.

In addition, as a proud native of Pittsburgh, PA, Jack founded the Incline Foundation which seeks to support and advance education in local inner-city and under-invested areas.

Deal of the Year Award Over $50M: Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. (NYSE:AQUA)

Deal Value:$7.5 Billion

Closing Date:2023-05-24

Company Description:Evoqua Water Technologies Corp. ("Evoqua") was a leader in mission-critical water treatment solutions and services for industrial, municipal and recreational customers in nine countries.

Deal Description:Water technology company Xylem Inc. agreed to buy Evoqua Water Technologies Corp (NYSE: AQUA) in a $7.5 billion all-stock deal, aiming to tap into a growing global awareness of risks around water scarcity.

Impact:The combination created the world's most advanced platform of capabilities to address customers' and communities' critical water challenges. Under the terms of the transaction, each share of Evoqua common stock was converted into the right to receive 0.48 of a share of Xylem common stock. This resulted in Xylem shareholders owning approximately 75 percent and Evoqua shareholders owning approximately 25 percent of the combined company on a fully diluted basis.

Deal of the Year Award Under $50M: Conco Services, LLC

Deal Value:$49.99 Million

Closing Date:2023-05-23

Company Description:Conco Services LLC, a Rising Point Capital, and Tecum Capital portfolio company, has acquired Blue Wolf Performance Solutions and its subsidiaries from Dorilton Capital Management. Blue Wolf subsidiaries include Aqua Drill International, Hennigan Engineering, National Heat Exchange, Reliable Industrial Group, and Hydrocarbon Filtration. Conco will integrate all Blue Wolf subsidiaries into one company that will trade as Conco Services, utilizing the legacy BWPS subsidiary names as branded services.

Conco Services LLC is a specialty cleaning and testing service company focusing on condenser and heat exchanger tube cleaning, nondestructive testing, leak detection, and tube plugging services in an environmentally friendly way. Conoco's methods are safer, faster, cleaner, and greener than many alternative cleaning options due to patented, chemical-free, low-pressure tube cleaning technology that will enhance the sustainability score of our customer's industrial facilities.

Deal Description:Tecum Capital and UMB Capital Corporation provided follow-on subordinated debt and equity capital and Unity Hunt provided new equity capital to support the Blue Wolf acquisition. Tecum Capital and UMB Capital Corporation supported Rising Point Capital's initial acquisition of Conco in April 2020. Tecum co-led the acquisition with Rising Point and management in 2020, and Tecum was the largest equity investor in the transaction at that time, in addition to providing debt capital. Revenue has increased over 3.5x since the investment.

The addition of Blue Wolf to the Conco portfolio of services creates a single solution for specialty cleaning and testing solutions for industrial and power customers. With the acquisition, Conco will continue to service industrial and power customers across the U.S., with 19 domestic locations and globally with offices in Australia, Belgium, and Germany. The acquisition also brings adjacent specialty services, such as aqua drilling, aqua milling, water jet cleaning, pre-commissioning services, lube oil flushing and filtering, and retubing to broaden Conco's service lines beyond its legacy proprietary mechanical tube cleaning and non-destructive testing services.

Impact:Employee Growth: At close, Conco had 185 employees. In 2023, Conco had 256 employees or added 71 employees during our ownership tenure. After the close of Blue Wolf, the combined entity had 527 employees by the end of 2023.

Synergy Plan: Conco is executing a detailed synergy plan that unlocks cross-selling opportunities across departments and the realization of cost-cutting measures from shared back-office resources.

Excellent Leadership: Edward "Gunner" Saxon became the CEO of the combined entity and has been continuously recognized for his leadership; he was a recent award recipient of the Smart Business Leadership award.

Women in Transaction: Jaclyn Ring

REAG

Jaclyn Ring is known for her expertise in facilitating successful buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions. She has garnered a reputation for excellence and integrity because of her outside of the box creativity and meticulous attention to detail that she consistently delivers to clients when navigating complex transactions. Jaclyn’s experience spans across various industries with the most recent notable transactions in metal fabrication and plastic injection molding.

She earned the Certified Mergers and Acquisitions Professional designation in 2020 and the Mergers & Acquisitions Master Intermediary designation in 2023, underscoring her commitment to professional excellence. She was elected to the M&A Source Board of Governors in 2023 where she also serves as the Sponsorship Chair. She is also a proud member of the ACG Pittsburgh Women’s network.

Jaclyn began her career in sports administration working in the front office for both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Pirates before transitioning to M&A in 2013. Over the past decade, she has established herself as a prominent figure in the investment banking community and steadily advanced to the position of Vice President at REAG.

M&A Service Provider of the Year Award: David Grubman

Jones Day

David Grubman is M&A Chair for Americas for the Firm's Corporate Practice. For more than 25 years, Dave has represented a wide range of clients in numerous complex and bet-the-company transactions and activist defense matters. He is widely recognized as the leading M&A lawyer in Western Pennsylvania and a leading M&A lawyer in the United States.

Dave recently represented Evoqua (NYSE: AQUA) in its $7.5 billion sale to Xylem, the co-founders of Archaea Energy in its $4.1 billion sale to BP plc, and an industrial conglomerate in its settlement with activist investor Barington. He has also represented U. S. Steel in the sale of Transtar to an affiliate of Fortress for $640 million, Shiseido in its $845 million acquisition of Drunk Elephant, Calgon Carbon (NYSE:CCC) in its $1.3 billion sale to Kuraray, RTI International (NYSE: RTI) in its $1.5 billion sale to Alcoa, Wabtec (NYSE: WAB) in its $11.1 billion merger with GE Transportation, U. S. Steel in an Option Agreement for a potential $2.4 billion iron ore joint venture with Stelco, NEP Group in its sale to Carlyle Global Partners, XIO Group in its $510 million tender offer for Lumenis, NRG Energy in its $1.375 billion sale of NRG Yield and NRG's Renewables Platform, and Black Box (NYSE:BBOX) in its sale to AGC Networks.

Dave is the board chair of Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh and a board officer of the Pittsburgh Zoo. He is also an alum of Leadership Pittsburgh and the Jewish Federation's National Young Leadership Cabinet.