Lodestar delivers a unique and long-term value-focused approach to high-performing clients seeking mid-market financial advisory and/or investment management services.
The first line of business, Financial Advisory Services, is distinctive because business transaction and restructuring advice is provided from a CEO's and owner's perspective rather than a traditional investment banking mindset. The founders' experience in both operating companies as CEO as well as providing strategy, performance improvement, and asset management consulting services for over 20 years revealed a profound need for smaller and often high growth middle-market firms (companies between $50m and $1b in market cap) to be supported by an advisor who could get deals done from the perspective of senior management—not financial engineers. By balancing needs of shareholders, customers, and employees, rather than pursuing purely near-term financial motives that favor a single stakeholder, Lodestar maximizes long-term value of the enterprise for clients considering business sale, growth financing, or restructuring options. Review information at www.icocompanies.com or www.NIRVC.com as select examples of Lodestar's restructuring, turnaround, and operational improvement impact from actively supporting these high performing industry leaders as clients.
The second line of business, Investment Management Services, arose from the founders' need to find a trusted source to invest the firm's capital to earn maximum returns across all market environments. Exhaustive searching yielded no suitable asset managers who backed up their investment approach by investing equally alongside clients with their own capital. The firm therefore started its own investment management offering. The firm invests client assets alongside firm assets, in both public and private markets, to ensure proper alignment of interests.
The firm aspires to have our clients associate our service levels with what our name represents. Lodestar is another name for the North Star, a universally known symbol of constancy and unbiased guidance. Through centuries of time, mariners used the Lodestar to guide them on their journeys. As the other stars and constellations moved in multiple directions around the star, travelers calculated their bearings by the Lodestar's constancy, traveling safely and directly to their destination. Similarly, we have built our business on having our clients depend on us as an unfailing source of guidance on their most pressing growth, operational improvement, transaction, and investment challenges. We aspired to forge and have achieved long-term relationships derived from offering stellar service and advice, but we require no permanent arrangements. Continuity of service depends solely on client satisfaction and development of mutual confidence.
The firm recognizes its success is sourced from those who mentored and apprenticed our senior team. One of the ways Lodestar gives back is by growing the next generation of distinctive and high-performing investors, business owners and operators, and advisors. Lodestar sponsored and led one of the nation's first student-managed global investment funds, giving aspiring business leaders and investors real world experience as part of their academic preparation so they could be optimally positioned to succeed in the work place. Please visit www.gfi2experience.com to see how over 700 students to date have received a fast start to a successful business leadership and investing career.