John Slater
Partner, Focus, LLC

John Slater, a FOCUS Partner, is a M&A and capital raising veteran of twenty-three years. He has served clients in the Southern and Midwestern regions in a wide variety of industries including information technology, digital media, business services, manufacturing and distribution logistics. Over the past thirty years Mr. Slater has managed more than 200 M&A and capital raising transactions with aggregate values in excess of $3 billion. His experience includes mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, private placement of debt and equity, transition planning for family businesses, business valuation, going private transactions, industrial revenue bond financings and initial public offerings.

Before joining FOCUS, Mr. Slater was Managing Principal of Slater & Company and its predecessor, Asset Services, LP, which he founded to provide investment banking services focused on middle market private and public companies. There he arranged the sale of Digital Safety Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of digital video technology to the public safety market to Integrian, Inc. During this time he also served as President of M&A International, an international network of independent merger and acquisition firms. Mr. Slater has helped shape the organization into a vibrant worldwide network with offices in thirty-seven cities in twenty-four countries. Mr. Slater championed the use of advanced communications technologies to create a real time, worldwide deal-making capability before anyone coined the term Intranet.

John Slater graduated Princeton University with a degree in Economics in 1970 and the University of Virginia Law School in 1973. For nine years Mr. Slater had a successful law practice with Martin Tate Morrow & Marston, and Winchester Huggins where he concentrated on financial and securities law. In 1982, Mr. Slater embarked on a new career to provide capital raising and financial advisory services to the entrepreneurial community. He joined the corporate finance department at Morgan Keegan & Company as First Vice President, Corporate Finance and participated in a variety of capital raising projects, including both private placements and public offerings.

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