Beyond the Business: Preparing Yourself and Your Company for a Transaction

Dominic focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions, and public and private equity and debt securities offerings. He represents entrepreneurs, emerging-growth, and seasoned companies (public and private), investors, venture capital, and private equity funds, and real estate sponsors in a wide variety of corporate finance transactions. Dominic is chair of Taft’s Mergers and Acquisitions group.

Experienced President with a demonstrated history of working in the environmental and industrial services industries. Skilled in Customer Service, Employee Engagement, Strategic Planning, Marketing Strategy, Sales Management, Business "Rehab" and Creating a Winning Culture.

Joe is a Managing Director with Fifth Third’s Industrials Investment Banking group, a part of Fifth Third Securities, Inc. (“FTS”), and has over 30 years of investment banking and financial advisory services experience working with top tier firms covering public and private companies in the middle market sector. Joe has significant experience in providing financial advisory services for mergers and acquisitions, acquisition financings, defense advisory/hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, debt financings, private placements, and public equity offerings (both initial public offerings and follow-ons). Joe has focused most of his career on middle market industrial focused companies.

Prior to joining FTS in 2017, Joe served as Senior Vice President at Caldwell Tanks, in Louisville, KY, a manufacturer of tanks and storage structures that are used for several industrial purposes. Joe headed Caldwell Tanks’ Energy Division. Before Caldwell Tanks, he served as a Managing Director for Western Reserve Partners in Cleveland, where he was co-head of the Industrials Group and executed a multitude of transactions across the industrials vertical.

Previously, Joe was an investment banker with KeyBanc Capital Markets and started his career as a consultant with Ernst & Young’s Financial Advisory Services group. Joe has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Miami University and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western University.

Having literally started out in grade school as an entrepreneur in the promotional products industry, John has a multi-decade successful track record to draw from in an array of industries and experiences. Right out of college John continued building his promotional product distribution business to eventually become in the top 1% industry wide prior to being acquired by industry leader Halo Branded Solutions in 1999. Since that time, John and through Herman Equity Partners have owned and operated other businesses and/or executed several private equity transactions directly or in partnership with other investment groups in several industries, including: consumer products, business & financial services, insurance services & specialty consulting, manufacturing, direct marketing, publishing, and with several real estate investments. Beyond the internal capital and strategic deal partners, John has the pleasure and is most grateful to work alongside a significant investor base of other family offices and high net worth individual stakeholders who have participated in multiple HEP related investments and over many years.