Ed Fitzelle, Managing Director

Ed has closed numerous transactions involving knowledge businesses of all types, including publishing, educational, trade show, and digital companies. He works with principals and their teams to find the best way to achieve their goals through transactions. To each engagement he brings his experience and hard-earned deal making knowledge -- gained in over thirty years of work as a corporate development executive and M&A professional. He has a deep understanding of business strategy, of what drives value, and of what is needed to enable decision makers to act decisively. 

He implements a selling process that reaches well beyond the "usual suspects" and runs down other pathways to activate non-obvious buyers. Ed has seen over and over again how a robust and thorough selling process provides the firm footing that a seller needs to negotiate from strength to get the best outcome. 

Similarly, on buy-side assignments, he and the LSA team work closely with the client to create a wide funnel of potential candidates, determine which ones will fit the buyer's needs, provide initial valuations, prioritize targets, initiate discussion and negotiate a purchase.
 

Ed is an expert in valuation using the standard income and comparable methodologies accepted by governments, the courts, the IRS, and industry.  LSA and Ed have added SAAS valuations to their repertoire for use in valuing companies with SAAS-like business models.  He has prepared numerous valuations of private companies, been an expert witness for many clients in contested situations and testified -- in support of or in opposition to -- valuations in state and IRS courts.
 

He began his career in B-to-B publishing. After working as a managing editor for a leading trade magazine and then a national travel magazine, he got an MBA degree in marketing from Columbia University.  He then worked for 13 years as an executive at McGraw-Hill in charge of planning, development and M&A for its book and magazines divisions. He left McGraw-Hill to join boutique investment bank AdMedia Partners as vice president, ascending to partner a year later. At AdMedia he was responsible for closing deals for private company owners selling to such companies as Reed Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, and Dun & Bradstreet. After AdMedia he was recruited to lead the re-development of The Conference Board's entire conference portfolio, adding new life to its evergreen conferences in healthcare, finance, human capital and marketing, and adding new events in those categories. He also began working with clients as an independent advisor and in 2004 began working with Whitestone Communications on a fee splitting basis, which later included working on specific deals with LSA. He officially joined LSA in 2015.
 

When the weather is right, Ed enjoys hiking in the Hudson Valley and kayaking on Long Island Sound. He lives in New Rochelle, NY with his wife, Jane Croes who is a partner in the law firm Emmet, Martin & Marvin. They have two grown children. 

Contact Ed at ed@luntzsuleiman.com