ACG NJ Breakfast Meeting | Beyond the Bank: Unlocking Private Debt for Growth, Acquisitions & Liquidity | March 17, 2026

Still thinking your commercial bank is the only path to capital? You’re leaving money and opportunity on the table.

Today’s private debt market is one of the most powerful, yet underutilized, tools in the middle-market playbook. With higher leverage, flexible terms, faster execution, and solutions tailored for real-world complexity, Private debt offers capital solutions that can fund acquisitions, growth, or liquidity often without diluting equity or sacrificing operational control.

Join ACG NJ for an unfiltered, expert-led discussion that will pull back the curtain on what private debt really is, how it works, and how to put it to work for your business or clients. Whether you're a CEO, investor, advisor, or dealmaker, this conversation will change how you think about capital strategy.

You’ll learn:

• What makes private debt fundamentally different from bank financing
• Who the key players are and how to access them
• Where private debt can drive the most value in today's M&A landscape
• Real-life examples from the front lines of growth and liquidity transactions

Whether you're raising capital, considering an acquisition, or planning a partial exit without giving up the reins, this panel will expand your dealmaking toolkit and arm you with insights you won't hear anywhere else.

Featured Panelists
Mark Taffet, Founder & CEO, MAST Advisors 
Stefan Shaffer, Managing Partner, SPP Capital
Moderator, Wolfgang Tsoutsouris, Managing Director, MAST Advisors, Inc.

This monthly breakfast is kindly supported by our sponsors: EisnerAmper, Crowe, Gibbons P.C., and M&T Bank.

SPEAKERS:

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Mark Taffet, Founder & CEO, MAST Advisors 
Mark S. Taffet is the founder and CEO of Mast Advisors, Inc.  He has over thirty years of experience as an investment banker, corporate strategist and senior operating executive.  Mr. Taffet spent the first half of his career providing corporate finance and strategic consulting services to large, often multi-national clients on a range of middle-market ($5 million to $500 million) assignments, including mergers, acquisitions, strategic investments, joint ventures, divestitures, corporate sales, private capital financing and strategic planning.  He is a frequent speaker at CEO Forums on topics ranging from Value Maximization to Strategic Transactions.

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Stefan Shaffer, Managing Partner, SPP Capital
Mr. Shaffer is a founder and the Managing Partner of SPP Capital Partners, LLC, a New York based investment bank and its affiliate, SPP Credit Partners LLC,  a private credit provider (collectively “SPP”), each dedicated exclusively to the U.S. private capital markets. Since its inception in 1989, SPP has completed more than $27 billion aggregate volume in private transactions comprised of more than 600 transactions

Mr. Shaffer had previously served as the President of SPP Hambro, the US subsidiary of Hambros Bank plc. Prior to his tenure at SPP, Mr. Shaffer was a Vice President in the Private Placement Group at Bankers Trust Company. Mr. Shaffer started his professional career as an attorney with the law firm of White & Case. 

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Wolfgang Tsoutsouris, Managing Director, MAST Advisors, Inc.
Wolfgang Tsoutsouris is Managing Director at MAST Advisors, a middle-market corporate advisory firm focusing on M&A, Capital Raising and Strategic Planning. He is also a Lead Coach at Law Firm Mentor, where he coaches dozens of small law firms on all matters of business management, including finance, hiring, systems/processes and marketing.

Prior to joining MAST Advisors, Wolfgang worked at a major accounting firm and a boutique corporate finance advisory group on projects including debt financings, corporate restructurings, crisis management and strategy assignments focused on growth, performance and profit optimization.