"Who are we?" and Cast of Characters

New World Merchant Partners is a team of finance, investment banking, legal, marketing, and technology professionals with extensive experience in assisting companies and their principals in achieving their business objectives, capturing opportunities, and posturing companies for success.

Structuring creative solutions for our clients companies is our expertise and passion.

Our focus has been on the following:

Corporate Finance

Reverse Mergers
Mergers & Acquisitions

Management Buyouts and Other Leveraged Acquisitions

Strategic Alternatives Reviews

Recapitalizations

Defensive Device Strategy and Execution

Divestitures

Buy-Side/Sell-Side Representation

Business Model Analysis

Corporate Identity

Our three initial partners are our founders. A little background may be in order here, although their full bios are available at newworldmp.com/expertise.aspx:

Andrew J. Glashow. Andrew is an investment banker specializing in micro cap transactions in the $5MM-$50MM range. He has twenty years of experience in the capital markets and in all phases of business start-up and growth, including feasibility studies, business plans, equity and debt funding, private placements, reverse mergers and IPOs.

Joseph Berkovitz. Joe is a serial web entrepreneur and SEO/SEM/marketing expert. In December 2001, Joe co-founded 123Movers.com (a consumer to business lead generating website). Joe and his cofounder grew the operation from a home based business to a multimillion dollar enterprise in the course of just two years. In January 2005, Joe sold 123Movers to Dominion Enterprises, (formerly Trader Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises and Landmark Communication), for an undisclosed multi-million dollar amount.

Bob Brown (Me). I was a corporate and securities lawyer from 1989 through July 2009 and am a deal-maker specializing in transaction structuring and execution. I have participated in approximately 230 public securities offerings involving an aggregate of approximately $13 billion of debt securities and approximately $6 billion of equity securities, as well as in numerous merger and acquisitions. I have extensive experience structuring, negotiating, and effecting private and public financings.

Our cast of characters includes an individual who is not a partner or employee, as well.

Zachary Schenkler. Zach is a consultant who serves as our Chief Technical Officer, and handles our technical policies, software development and client analysis engagements. From 2002 to 2006, Zach worked with Joe at 123movers.com and served as the Director of Business Development. In this position, he specialized in Strategic Partnerships, new technical development, SEO, search marketing and media buys with the purpose of driving significant traffic and return. From October 2006 to October 2009, Zach founded and led the efforts for Owebz, a start-up organization focused on providing strategic business consulting and software development initiatives for its' clients.

Joe, Andrew, and I came together in August 2009 to discuss working on a single project together, but after way too much discussion, decided that there were innumerable opportunities and that we should form a firm, Our Firm. Zach was interested in working with us on an ad hoc basis initially as a consultant.

The initial period of pseudo-operations, from August 2009 to late September 2009, was chaotic - Andrew, who is based in Newport, Rhode Island, had a beautiful office; the rest of us had no office and basically found that any free pace would suffice - Starbucks, our living rooms, the W Hotel lobby in Manhattan, etc. This worked for a while, but we were surprised how much traction we gained in the marketplace. Andrew came to our firm with several engagements in hand. My former legal clients sought to engage us for strategic and financial advisory services. Joe's expertise attracted Web entrepreneurs in search of partnership, guidance, and expertise. We needed a facility where we could execute, brainstorm, plan, and concentrate without major distraction. Frankly, we needed an office in the New York metropolitan area, but that will be the subject of a future post.

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My purpose in creating this blog is to document our progress, friendship, successes, failures, and periodic brilliance, as well as the development of our merchant banking/financial and strategic advisory/investment banking firm. I hope to supplement my episodic posts with some actual kernels of knowledge and encourage readers/followers (if any) to contact us if we can be of assistance in any of our areas of expertise.