Christopher J. McKenna
Chris is Managing Partner at Carleton McKenna & Co. He is the person owners call when the hard part of the transaction is not the business, it is the ownership group: multiple shareholders who want different things, a partner who wants out, a buy-sell agreement nobody has read in fifteen years.
Christopher McKenna is Managing Partner at Carleton McKenna & Company. Before joining Carleton McKenna, Chris partnered with a private equity firm to buy a Cleveland manufacturing business where he was President and CEO. Previously, Chris was the Director of Financial Analysis with the MacLean-Fogg Company in Chicago where he executed on financial transactions and acquisitions and also managed a business unit.
Chris was an Associate with the investment banking firm of Rodman & Renshaw in New York, where he was involved with private and public transactions to raise equity, subordinated and senior debt. He began his career in commercial banking in New York with Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Security Pacific Business Credit.
Chris has served on the boards of a number of private corporations and not-for-profits, including: The First Tee of Cleveland, the Leadership Council of University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center and The Center for Health Affairs.
Chris received his B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College and his M.B.A. with High Distinction from the University of Michigan Business School. Chris enjoys golf, is an avid skier and has passed his skiing passion on to his four children. Chris is a Principal and holds his FINRA Series 6, 7, 24, 79, and 63 licenses.
His consistent advice to owners, in print and in person, is that value is made in the years before a process rather than during it: build durable and directional earnings, manage working capital aggressively well ahead of a close, and never let the obvious buyer be the only buyer. An owner who negotiates with a single acquirer is not running a process, and it shows in the final number.
Much of his work now involves companies where the ownership is complicated. Founders who brought in partners decades ago and never revisited the paperwork. Siblings with different appetites for risk. Minority holders with no liquidity and no voice. These situations are solvable, but they are solved before a buyer is in the room, not during diligence.
- Managing Partner, Carleton McKenna & Co
- Former President & CEO, private equity-backed Cleveland manufacturer
- Prior: MacLean-Fogg Company — Director of Financial Analysis
- Prior: Rodman & Renshaw — Associate, New York
- Focus: complex ownership and shareholder transitions
Outside the
transaction.
Where Christopher
works.
not aligned?
Chris is glad to talk through where the disagreement actually sits and what structures resolve it. Confidential, and most of these conversations happen well before a transaction is on the table.