|  John Slater, a FOCUS Partner, is an M&A and capital raising veteran of twenty-three years. He has served clients throughout the southeastern and mid-continental U. S. in a wide variety of industries including information technology, business services, manufacturing, and distribution logistics. Over the past thirty years Mr. Slater has managed more than 200 M&A and capital raising transactions with aggregate values in excess of $3 billion. His experience includes mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, private placement of debt and equity, transition planning for family businesses, business valuation, going private transactions, industrial revenue bond financings, Section 363 sales in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and initial public offerings.
Mr. Slater heads Focus’s Financial Alternatives Services Team (FAST), which assists companies in arranging senior and junior debt financing. In the current financial climate many firms are under pressure from their existing lenders. The FAST team assists in negotiating with existing lenders as well as arranging sources of replacement financing. As the economy improves, many firms will find that their existing capital base will not support their opportunities for growth. The FAST team assists such firms with mezzanine loan/equity capital placements and with arranging tax favored/government subsidized growth financing. In 2008 Mr. Slater represented Southern Components, Inc. in a comprehensive senior debt refinancing, which enabled the client to take advantage of an opportunity to provide innovative fiber materials to the upholstered furniture industry. As a result the client was positioned to prosper in an industry severely impacted by the 2008/2009 recession.
He publishes the Tough Times blog at www.mergers.com/toughtimes. Tough Times provides information and tools to assist entrepreneurs and their advisors in addressing issues raised by the tight financial climate. He has frequently spoken to lenders and business owners on capital raising, loan workouts and other topics of current interest.
Before joining FOCUS, Mr. Slater was Managing Principal of Slater & Company and its predecessor, Asset Services, LP, which he founded to provide investment banking services focused on middle market private and public companies. During the 1990’s he also served as President of M&A International, an international network of independent merger and acquisition firms. Mr. Slater helped shape the organization into a vibrant worldwide network with offices in thirty-seven cities in twenty-four countries. Mr. Slater championed the use of advanced communications technologies to create a real time, worldwide deal-making capability before anyone coined the term Intranet. Mr. Slater merged Slater & Company with Focus because of the strength of its supporting technology and the tremendous collective talent pool represented by its Partners and Managing Directors.
John Slater graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Economics in 1970 and the University of Virginia Law School in 1973. For nine years Mr. Slater had a successful law practice with Martin Tate Morrow & Marston, and Winchester Huggins, where he concentrated on financial and securities law. In 1982, Mr. Slater embarked on a new career to provide capital raising and financial advisory services to the entrepreneurial community. He spent three years in the then embryonic corporate finance department of Morgan Keegan & Company as First Vice President, Corporate Finance and participated in a variety of capital raising projects, including both private placements and public offerings before forming his own company.
Contact Information:
John Slater
135 Morningside Park
Memphis, TN 38104
Phone: 404-963-8255
Cell: 901-230-5062
Fax: 901.324.4868
john.slater@focusbankers.com
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