New firm focuses on mergers

Joseph Finnerty

Joseph Finnerty, CPA, a former Big 4 accounting firm director, has founded a new mergers and acquisitions (M&A) firm, CenterSquare Advisory.

The Philadelphia, Pa.-based firm advises corporations, private equity firms and family offices evaluating the acquisition or divestiture of businesses with a focus on small- and medium-sized businesses and lower middle-market companies.

Most recently, Finnerty was a director in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Deals Practice. He has advised on more than 75 merger and acquisition transactions in various industries, including consumer products, manufacturing and distribution, with distinct experience in business-to-business and business-to-consumer services.

“There is a lot of consolidation going on in highly fragmented services, such as pest control, commercial landscaping, plumbing and HVAC, transportation and logistics and managed information technology because investors love a company with a solid book of recurring revenues with strong predictable cash flows,” says Finnerty.

In his previous role, Finnerty primarily represented large corporations and private equity firms that were evaluating buying smaller companies. He noticed the smaller businesses were often underrepresented from a finance and accounting perspective.

“Needless to say, this led these businesses to leave a lot of value on the table and sometimes even derailed an excellent opportunity over an issue that could have been prevented,” he says. “That is exactly why I founded CenterSquare Advisory: to assist investors and owners of smaller enterprises and lower middle-market companies in maximizing value in their businesses and the strategies they pursue.”

Finnerty has worked on 16 deals in the pest control industry.

“It has been an exciting past few years in the pest control industry from an M&A perspective, given the amount of consolidation,” Finnerty tells PMP. “I don’t think it will be slowing down anytime soon if the multiples stay the way they have been…I loved seeing these smaller family-owned businesses successfully pass on their legacy while turning their life of hard work into liquidity for themselves and their families.”