ProfESSIONAL services
Our professional management consulting services are typically not available to the general business public, but rather are provided as an adjunct to our private equity investment activities, i.e., provided to our portfolio companies, whether wholly-owned, majority controlled, or minority non-controlled companies. In some cases, we may provide such services on a fee basis to a limited, select group of telecom clients with whom we’ve worked with for decades, while in other cases, and on a very limited and special engagement basis, we may provide certain limited and focused fee-based management consulting services to certain companies within which we do not have any vested financial interests, and where such companies have been referred to us by way of professional referrals from existing clientele or portfolio companies.
The majority of our services are highly specialized, and our primary focus is the telecommunications industry and commercial and industrial infrastructure real estate development.
Summary of Typical Professional Services...
The majority of our services are highly specialized, and our primary focus is the telecommunications industry and commercial and industrial infrastructure real estate development.
Summary of Typical Professional Services...
- New Entrepreneurial Enterprise Startup - Regulated Telecom, Internet, and Independent & Franchise Small Business
- Regulatory Affairs & Compliance - Telecommunications, i.e., FCC, NTIA, State Public Utilities Commission
- Mergers and Acquisitions Due Diligence - Pre-Acquisition, Post-Acquisition & Integration
- Finance - Capital Markets - Private Equity, Private Debt, Proprietary Publicly Traded Equities Portfolio Management
- Real Estate Development - Finance, Governmental Entitlements, Feasibility, Negotiations, Acquisitions, Parcel Assemblage, Subdivision, Project Management, and other similarly related services
- Real Estate Investment - Proprietary Real Assets Portfolio, Co-Investments Portfolio, Sponsored Portfolio
While some private equity investment firms provide capital to new business enterprises, others provide capital to existing enterprises, while yet others provide capital to both, many also provide certain management consulting services along with the capital provided. Often times when an enterprise seeks funding there are reasons the funding is needed that are rooted in, or associated with, existing management’s deficiency of knowledge or experience in certain areas, such as when some of the requirements of starting or operating a business enterprise is not a core competence of its management team.
Entrepreneurs have a lot of zeal for their core competence, for instance the founder of a new start up whose business is that of offering mobile telephone service, or wireless Internet service, will have a lot of zeal or enthusiasm for the underlying technologies and for the selling of the services made possible by these technologies and building their companies via the sales growth, yet they may be weighed down by the boring, mundane administrative parts of their business. Payroll is an example of the mundane, repetitive requirements of business and is the top service that is outsourced to companies that provide payroll services, and it works quite well. As for the communications services business, not only is there a need for the repetitive mundane, such as accounting or bookkeeping, payroll, and excessive tax reporting requirements, added to this overhead is the matter of compliance with an entirely separate layer of the mundane, that of communications regulations imposed by the Federal Communications Commissions and the 50 states’ public utilities commission regulations, among others.
This is where our management consulting expertise comes in. We enable the expeditious building of a company by enabling and enhancing the entrepreneurial zeal of the founders and executive management to do their thing, while our firm takes care of the mundane regulatory requirements imposed on communications companies, of which there are many. This includes the burdensome requirements that must be undertaken prior to, and contemporaneous with, starting a new communications enterprise, as well as the ongoing federal, state, and local regulatory reporting requirements. Second only to healthcare regulation, communications regulations are among the most complex ever created. Yes, communications regulations are just as, if not more so, complex and convoluted than federal and state tax regulations.
We do not normally provide, or advertise, this type of specialized management consulting services to the general business public, but rather these types of services are an adjunct to our private equity portfolio companies where we have vested majority (control) interests, minority (non-control) interests, or future investment interests. On a very limited and special engagement basis, typically derived from existing professional referrals only, we may provide certain limited and focused, fee-based management consulting services to certain companies within which we do not have vested financial interests.
Examples of typical specialized management consulting services that we provide to communications companies follow...
Preparation of registrations and applications to the Federal Communications Commission, the Universal Service Administration Company, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, inter alia, as well as the preparations of applications to a state or states’ public utility commissions for certification as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), interexchange carrier (IXC), competitive access provider (CAP), and similar certifications, that enable a company to enter into, and provide certain communications services to the public. These services further include the design of internal processes, protocols, and reporting systems, and operation of same, which also includes overseeing and processing of recurring reporting obligations, to the counter parties to such agreements.
Separately, these specialized services may also include the negotiation of franchise agreements and similar agreements with municipal governments, other state agencies such as Departments of Transportation, as well as infrastructure related agreements with other regulated communications companies, and regulated non-telecom utility companies, railway companies, and private landowners. These types of agreements typically allow for the acquisition of rights to install and occupy streets, highways, railways, utility poles, conduits, private lands, inter alia. and operate the network facilities of a telecommunications company situated thereon. We also discreetly undertake tasks such as parcel assemblage, entitlements and other land and real estate development activities for datacenters, colo hotels and larger industrial infrastructure buildings. These types of rights are known as “underlying rights”, and acquisition, development and related services have been our core competence for over three decades. We do not advertise the offering of these services but rather our deal flow originates by referral only from long term existing clients and other industry partners and colleagues. This is the power of our stellar reputation, and that reputation comes from our professional and personalized attention to our clients' needs and we achieve this by remaining small and nimble and serving a distinct and limited clientele.