Sole Buyer Endorsing The March Group Has Never Bought

Joe Katcha of High Street Capital is a very nice guy. I’ve met him. We’ve talked about the M&A and private equity business, deals, and I enjoyed dinner with him in Chicago. He has a healthy portfolio of private businesses he’s bought (in whole or in part). He’s also featured on the website of The March Group. He appears in the main video on The March Group website and says “The March Group is an important part of our sourcing”. But, he says he has never bought a business from The March Group.

He says he hopes to get some deals from them in the future and that they asked him to do them a favor by allowing their audio-video team to visit his office and interview him.

When I called Mr. Katcha to inquire into his relationship and experience with The March Group he acted very surprised that he was on their website video. He also said that, based on his experience, The March Group is very similar to GW Equity (now Generational Equity) and RSM Equico. He acknowledge that he’s looked at seller clients of both Generational Equity and The March Group, he’s never bought one from either, and that the seller clients of both tend to have unrealistic expectations of value. The implication is that the firms themselves lead their clients to believe that their company is worth more that it actually is … to induce them to pay the retainer fee.

He said both are very professional to deal with and he made the distinction that The March Group tends to represent companies with a little higher EBITDA than those of Generational Equity, and Katcha’s firm wants to buy companies with these higher EBITDAs. So, he wants to keep his door open to The March Group in the hopes he’ll find a deal from them. The question is, of course, doesn’t The March Group have buyers that have actually purchased from them they could ask to do the video? There is no other conclusion to make here but that this lends credence to the claim that The March Group don’t actually sell many businesses — just collects a lot of retainer fees.