Member Spotlight | Jeffrey Bartlett

ACG WI Member Since: 2015 ACG WI Involvement: ACG Cup Mentor (2016 and 2017)

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Why did you join ACG?
ACG is an opportunity to interact with fellow professionals who lead the M&A community in Wisconsin and gain insights from them into key trends and best practices.

How has ACG WI helped your career?
Successfully completing transactions is difficult. I have worked with fellow ACG members that have provided my clients difference making ideas that have helped them and me succeed.

What has ACG Membership meant to you?
ACG WI has exposed me to programs and experiences that I couldn’t have developed on my own. The Chapter’s focus on manufacturers/service companies and PEs that are the most direct stakeholders of successful M&A makes my membership in ACG Wisconsin particularly rewarding.

What lessons have you learned during the pandemic that you think will carry over in the long term?
The pandemic has changed and improved M&A. From an evaluation and due diligence standpoint, electronic and virtual access has streamlined the transaction process helping buyers and sellers work through the “mechanics” of evaluating and pulling together transactions. These tools, however, cannot replace the critical aspect of direct person-to-person interaction that is the key to success of the best transactions.

What do you think are the biggest challenges that your industry will face in the next 5 years, and what actions is your business taking to position it for success in the future?
The biggest challenge facing the M&A, corporate and private equity communities is the inefficiency with matching Baby Boom, privately owned companies with the new investors best suited to succeed and carry on the legacies of them. Successful matching of partners is critical to our success as an industry, region, and country. The challenge for our firm is to maintain our curiosity and aggressively use all avenues to access the best (not necessarily the easiest) solutions to client needs in a constantly evolving investment ecosystem.

What do you do for fun?
I am an avid fly angler. It has been rewarding to pass my enthusiasm for this activity to my grown children. I also participate in racket sports and enjoy traveling with my wife, Jane.

If you could learn to do anything, what would it be?
I earned my private pilot’s license in the 1990s. I would like to further that skill set with an instrument rating and use it to travel more with my wife and children.

What is the best book you have read in the past year?
I enjoyed reading Red Notice by Bill Browder. The book reinforced the uniqueness of our entrepreneurial and rule of law systems and the need to protect them from authoritarian usurpation.