(Article below as it appears in the BizTimes)

For 25 years, Emory & Co. has served as a market leader in Wisconsin providing privately held companies with business valuations and company sale transactions.

Founded in 1999, the firm’s work involves “middle-market” companies, typically with annual sales between $5 million and $100 million on the mergers and acquisitions advisory side and often larger companies on the valuation side of the business.

“We appraise the stock of many of the leading privately held companies in Wisconsin for a wide variety of purposes,” said John Emory Jr., president. “More than a third of the 50 largest privately held companies in southeast Wisconsin are our business valuation clients. We are dedicated to our clients and measure our success by their success,” added F.R. Dengel, managing director.

Emory & Co. began as a business valuation firm. Emory’s father, John Emory Sr., had been an investment banker with Robert W. Baird & Co., where he developed a specialty in appraising the stock of privately owned companies.

When Baird exited the appraisal business in 1999, Emory’s father and two others left Baird, John Emory Jr. left his position as a mergers and acquisitions attorney at a large business law firm — and Emory & Co. was born.

When he turned 80 a few years ago, John Emory Sr. stepped back from day-to-day involvement at the company, leaving John Emory Jr. to lead it.

With more than 150 company sale transactions completed to date, the team at Emory & Co. finished another strong year selling companies and doing appraisals in 2023.

The team spends a lot of time listening to their clients to truly understand their goals and business culture, to best advise on which potential buyers would be better cultural fits than others. The firm typically contacts many potential strategic buyers and private equity groups to find the best buyers who bring top dollar, as well as those who will protect the culture and legacy of the business.

Their clients find them primarily through referrals from other prior business owners and the network of trusted business advisors, such as bankers, lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers.

“We’ve achieved sale prices substantially above what our clients and we have expected in most of our business sale transactions representing sellers in the last five years, which has resulted in extremely happy seller clients and future referrals,” Taylor Kotke, managing director, said. “As baby boomer business owners continue to seek exits from owning their companies, our future looks bright.”

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