biff's blog

The principals of Barnard/Montague Capital Advisors are pleased to announce the sale of Commercial Microwave Technology, Inc., (“CMT”) headquartered in Rancho Cordova, CA, to API Technologies Corp. (“API”) (NASDAQ:ATNY).

The principals of Barnard/Montague Capital Advisors are pleased to announce the successful completion of a strategic and financial advisory engagement for Dura Chemicals, Inc, of Emeryville, CA.

We haven't updated our WSJ Headlines Economic Gauge since January because it was indicating consistently positive results in the economy—that is, until June of this year, when it headed decisively negative. (Followers of our blog will recall that we created our WSJ Headlines Economic Gauge under the premise that the count of the Wall Street Journal finance-related article headlines with a positive, neutral, or negative tone can provide an indication of the perceived health of the economy.)

PRESS RELEASE
May 1, 2011
San Francisco, CA

Biff Barnard, Jeanne Montague, and David Sloan, the partners of Barnard/Montague Capital Advisors, today announced that Philip F. Otto has joined the firm’s Board of Advisors.

PRESS RELEASE
April 4, 2011
San Francisco, CA

Biff Barnard and Jeanne Montague, the founders of Barnard/Montague Capital Advisors, today announced that David B. Sloan has joined the firm as a partner.

Since our last update, the WSJ Headlines Economic Gauge has continued to move in a positive direction, with very strong quarterly results and even stronger week-to-week trends during the month of December.

Recently, I served as the moderator of a panel of middle-market focused investment bankers sponsored by the Association for Corporate Growth - San Francisco Chapter. The audience was comprised of business owners as well as private equity professionals, bankers, lawyers, accountants and other advisers to middle-market companies.

The principals of Barnard/Montague Capital Advisors are pleased to announce the sale of Partners in Business Systems, Inc., of Danville, CA, to Software Management Consultants, Inc., with corporate headquarters in Glendale, CA.

Review of the First Half of 2010

Many observers are commenting that M&A activity is slowing and that the trends are indicating a weak second half. However, as it pertains to middle-market companies, the statistics are somewhat misleading. It is true that announced global M&A activity remained stable during H1 2010 at $976 billion (H1 2009 was at $977 billion), and that announced U.S. H1 2010 M&A activity, at $339 billion, was down 5% from H1 2009 (at $358 billion)—according to Thomson Reuters. However, M&A volumes for H1 2010 for deals of less than $500 million were up 39% over H1 2009. Another interesting change is that M&A activity backed by global private-equity funds for Q2 2010 totaled $40 billion, which is an increase of 33% over Q1 2010 and an increase of 125% from Q1 2009, with year-to-date activity up 102% from H1 2009. These are all clear signs that domestic middle-market activity is accelerating!