• Client: $150M air pollution control manufacturer, built from three acquisitions
• Engagement: Strategic Co-Designer, Jane Gentry & Company
• Results: EBITDA margin 9% to 13% (~$6M/year), zero unplanned executive departures, decisions cut from weeks to days
• Outcome: sold in early 2025 at 8x EBITDA, roughly $155M

The company sold in early 2025 at 8x EBITDA, roughly $155M. Eighteen months earlier, it had run through four CEOs in five years and couldn’t get a decision made.

This $150M manufacturer had been assembled from three acquisitions and never actually put together. Three finance functions. Three cultures. Three sets of numbers that never reconciled. Every decision that mattered climbed to the top of the house and stopped. The board kept replacing the driver. The problem was the machine.

Three companies, one letterhead. Nobody could get a decision made.
CEO

Jane Gentry treated it as a design problem, not a leadership one. One P&L. Decision rights written down and handed to the division leaders who owned the results. One operating rhythm, so three teams finally ran on the same calendar, the same metrics, the same definition of done.

EBITDA margin went from 9% to 13% in eighteen months, most of it from collapsing three back offices into one. On $150M, that’s roughly $6M in new annual EBITDA. Executive turnover after the redesign: zero. Decisions that used to take weeks now took days. When the company went to market, buyers saw one clean business instead of three tangled ones.

If you’re preparing a company built by acquisition for exit and it still runs like three companies, that gap is costing you multiple. Close it before you go to market.

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