Mike Firmage, Co-Founder of Horizon Partners, Named Investment Banker of the Year at the M&A Advisor Awards
NEW YORK, March 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The M&A Advisor recently honored the winners of the prestigious M&A Advisor Awards during a pandemic-friendly Virtual Awards Gala held in their honor.
At the awards, Mike Firmage, Co-founder and Managing Director at Horizon Partners, was named Investment Banker of the Year.
Since co-founding Horizon with Sandy Kory in 2010, Firmage has pioneered a bespoke, artisanal M&A advisory model, crafting highly customized transactions like the dual-buyout structures conceptualized and executed for Horizon clients like DistroKid (former award-winning transaction) and Spatial Networks, which was also awarded top honors at this year's gala. The significant recognition comes a year after Firmage was named Boutique Investment Banker of the Year by the M&A Atlas Awards for innovation in transaction strategy, process, and structuring.
"These award winners are the standouts of the year, representing the finest deals and professionals within the M&A industry," said Roger Aguinaldo, Founder of The M&A Advisor. "This period was ripe with challenges, but also abundant with M&A activity, and these professionals were able to rise above the noise executing transactions representing several hundreds of billions of dollars in enterprise value."
At the gala, Firmage and his Horizon Partners team were also honored with the Information Technology Deal of the Year Award for their work on Kayne Partners' and Kennet Partners' recapitalization of Spatial Networks, developers of the category-creating Fulcrum App. In the transaction, Firmage conceived of and architected the combination of a leading growth buyout firm that had historically focused on smaller buyouts and a top-tier growth equity investor that had traditionally focused on minority investments. In doing so, he successfully brought the Spatial Networks board an investor group that would provide a diversity of thought, experience, insight, and expertise uncommon in transactions of this category. Regarding Mike's work on his transaction, Spatial Networks founder Tony Quartararo said:
"In addition to delivering a tremendous outcome and innovative transaction structure, Mike took the time to truly understand who I am, what my underlying motivations were (and weren't), and what I wanted to ultimately take away from the deal transaction. He understood that brutal honesty and integrity were paramount to me and to my team, and he honored that throughout the process, even while educating me and bringing to light sometimes less-than-positive developments. That quality of character has enabled us to remain professional connections and friends well past the close of our transaction, an added bonus to a very successful exit."
Of the Investment Banker and Deal of the Year awards, Firmage said, "I am extremely thankful to be recognized for the innovations and outcomes that I have dedicated my career to architecting and am grateful to past and present colleagues and clients for their contributions to the endeavors culminating in such an honor. It takes a multitude of hard-working and dedicated professionals to create award-winning outcomes, and I am grateful to work with people of that caliber at Horizon and at our client companies."
These awards come after a run where the Horizon Partners team earned 'Transaction of the Year' distinctions at both The M&A Atlas Awards and The M&A Advisor Awards for Silversmith and Spotify's acquisition of a majority equity stake in DistroKid and Chegg's acquisition of Mathway. On top of these honors, Horizon Partners was recently named 'Boutique Investment Bank of the Year' in successive award seasons from 2019-2020 at the M&A Atlas Awards.
For more information on Horizon Partners, please email [email protected] or visit www.horizonpartners.com
About The M&A Advisor Awards
An independent judging committee comprised of top M&A industry experts determined the ultimate recipients of the awards. Click Here to view the judges. For a detailed list of all of the Award Winners for the 19th Annual M&A Advisor Awards, please Click Here.
For more information about the 19th Annual M&A Awards Program, please contact The M&A Advisor at 212-951-1550.
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