Founded 2020 · Chicago · FINRA Series 79 · CRD #6314298
Disciplined. Senior-Led. QofE-First.
Kessler & Brandt is a Chicago boutique formed in 2020 to run founder-led sell-side mandates the way Marcus learned to run them at Houlihan Lokey and Lincoln Intl. — without the 200-name auction template, the analyst handoff, or the diligence response that nobody senior actually read.
The arc
From Bulge-Bracket Pitchbook to Founder-Led Sell-Side
Marcus took his finance BBA at Michigan Ross in 2008 and his MBA at Northwestern Kellogg in 2014. Between those degrees and the founding of Kessler & Brandt, he spent thirteen consecutive years inside middle-market industrial M&A — five at Houlihan Lokey running precision-manufacturing, automation, and aerospace-supply mandates from Associate up through Vice President; six at Lincoln Intl. leading the Industrial Tech group as Director and closing twenty-two sell-sides under $200M EV.
In 2020 he founded Kessler & Brandt with Daniela Brandt, a former Lincoln Intl. colleague, with one explicit charter: stay deliberately small, take only mandates Marcus could personally run end-to-end, and replace the email-thread workflow that had failed every founder-led process he had ever watched go off-rails.
That charter is why every Kessler & Brandt client gets a private deal portal: a Deal-Clock band tracking the live process, a curated buyer log, the fee staircase, the data room, and a direct memo thread with Marcus — not a CC’d email chain.
The bench · five seniors, no analyst handoff
The Kessler & Brandt Bench
A deliberately small, deliberately senior bench. Marcus leads every mandate personally; Daniela is the deal-execution second; Roman, Aiyana, and Theo own diligence, modeling, and process logistics with no analyst layer in between.
Marcus Kessler
Founding Partner
Houlihan Lokey · Lincoln Intl. · FINRA Series 79 / 63 · CRD #6314298
Closes every mandate personally. Reads every diligence response before it leaves the data room. Will not run a process that is not built around the founder’s retirement timeline.
Daniela Brandt
Partner
Lincoln Intl. · FINRA Series 79 · CRD #6201432
Owns deal execution. Quarterbacks the buyer log, IOI grading rubric, and exclusivity-window discipline. Twelve years of mid-market industrial sell-side experience.
Roman Petrov
Director, Industrials
Robert W. Baird · CFA · 9 yrs sector coverage
Owns sector framing — comp transactions, customer-concentration profiles, multi-year backlog reads. Source of every CIM market section.
Aiyana Greer
VP, Diligence
Deloitte M&A Transaction Services · CPA
Runs Quality-of-Earnings reconstruction, working-capital roll-forward, and the diligence response queue. Will catch a buyer-side QofE shenanigan before the founder feels it.
Theo Maroney
VP, Process & Logistics
Lincoln Intl. · NDA / data-room ops
Owns the deal calendar, NDA orchestration, data-room access registry, and process-letter logistics. Every founder hears from him within four hours.
Recognition · memberships
Recognition & Memberships
ACG Chicago · M&A Source · Alliance of M&A Advisors. ACG Chicago Deal of the Year (Middle Market) 2024 for a $112M founder sell-side. Selected partner in Clockless’s concierge advisory program (2025).
Next move
Let’s talk about your liquidity plan
Whether you are eighteen months out or holding an unsolicited offer this morning, it starts with one conversation. No analyst handoff, no junior screener — Marcus picks up.