What Sourcing Deals for a Private Equity Firm Taught Me About Selling Them

By Rob Schwartz

For sixteen years, my job at Resilience Capital Partners was to find deals before anyone else did.

Resilience is a Cleveland-based private equity firm that invests in special situations: companies working through bankruptcy, excess liabilities, divestitures, or capital shortfalls. As Managing Director of Business Development, I built the pipeline that fed the firm's investment strategy, sourcing acquisition opportunities from investment bankers, restructuring professionals, lenders, and other funds across the country. Workout lenders looking to move distressed credits off their books were some of my steadiest referral sources, and those relationships taught me how a lender thinks about risk long before a deal reaches a term sheet.

That work built something I use every day at Ravinia: a network of well over a thousand relationships with investment bankers, restructuring advisors, attorneys, other private equity firms, and lenders, built one meeting, one conference, and one phone call at a time. I didn't inherit this network. I built it by showing up consistently, delivering on what I said I'd do, and staying in touch long after a given deal closed or didn't come together.

That distinction matters more than it might sound. Anyone can compile a list of two hundred private equity firms. Far fewer people have actually sat across the table from those firms' deal teams, understood how they underwrite risk, and know which ones move fast and which ones don't. During my time at Resilience, I substantially increased the firm's annual deal flow year after year throughout my tenure. That growth came from knowing which connections to prioritize and which opportunities were worth a buyer's time. It's the same judgment I apply now, in reverse, on the sell side.

On the sell side

When Ravinia runs a sale process for a client, the goal is to get the business in front of the right buyers, not the most buyers. My years on the buy side taught me what a private equity firm actually wants to see in an opportunity:

• A clean story

• A credible growth thesis

• A seller who understands and can move quickly through the buyer's diligence process

That perspective doesn't stop at introductions. It carries into execution, anticipating how a buyer will react to a data room and where they're likely to push back in diligence. It's why I've been able to contribute directly to executing sell-side M&A engagements at Ravinia, not just opening doors to them. For a seller, that is often the difference between a process that stalls in diligence and one that gets to a close.

In debt advisory

The same holds for debt advisory, though the network behind it is different: the bank and non-bank lenders I got to know while sourcing deals at Resilience. They were never abstractions. They were people I called regularly to understand what they could finance, at what leverage, and under what conditions. That base of lender relationships, on both the bank and non-bank side, now helps me contribute to Ravinia's debt advisory work: identifying which lenders are realistic candidates for a client's refinancing, and helping shape a structure those lenders will actually approve.

In bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is the piece I know as both buyer and seller. At Resilience, many of the businesses we acquired came out of bankruptcy, through Section 363 sales, or through Article 9 foreclosure sales, and my ties to bankruptcy attorneys were often how those opportunities reached me in the first place. At Ravinia, I'm now on the other side of that same transaction, helping sell companies that are in bankruptcy. Having sourced 363 and Article 9 deals as a buyer, I understand what a court, a creditors' committee, or a secured lender needs to see to support a sale, and that knowledge, paired with those same attorney relationships, helps keep a bankruptcy sale process moving toward a closing.

None of this replaces the work Ravinia's deal teams do every day: running processes, building models, and negotiating terms. What it adds is reach, judgment, and firsthand experience getting deals across the finish line, in and out of bankruptcy: a wider net of buyers and lenders who already know me, and an instinct for what makes a deal worth their time. That combination is what I bring to every engagement, and it's why the relationships I spent sixteen years building are still paying off, just from the other side of the table. For the bankers, attorneys, and lenders who bring a client to Ravinia, that experience becomes part of the deal too: a partner who understands how buyers evaluate a business, and a referral they can stand behind.

About the Author

Rob Schwartz is a Managing Director at Ravinia Capital, where he advises clients on sell-side M&A, debt, and special situations. He began his career as a practicing attorney before spending 15 years at Resilience Capital Partners, a middle-market private equity firm, where he served as Managing Director of Business Development. In that role he oversaw acquisition sourcing across the country and helped establish Resilience as a leading special situations investor in the middle market.

Rob is an active member of the Turnaround Management Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, and the Association for Corporate Growth.

He holds a BA from Emory University and a JD from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

About the Firm

Ravinia Capital is a Chicago-based investment bank advising middle-market companies, their owners, investors, and lenders across the key inflection points in a company's life. Its services span sell-side M&A, debt advisory and refinancing, capital raising, distressed and special situations, and valuation and corporate finance advisory. The firm runs disciplined processes built to close, pairing deep transaction experience with senior-level attention on every engagement.

Ravinia Capital LLC · Chicago, IL · raviniacapitalllc.com. Informational only; not an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security. Any offer will be made solely to qualified investors through definitive offering documents. Securities offered through StillPoint Capital, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC.