About Us
As Professional Borrowers™, what problem do we solve?
The middle market debt capital area is highly inefficient—as nearly all borrowers pay too much and have more restrictive deal terms than necessary.
ECS takes care of this. Our average financing has $70MM Debt with $17MM EBITDA.
Our Leaders are intimately experienced in your lender’s approval process
Our leaders enjoyed distinguished commercial banking careers as Group Heads and Team Leaders—former “insiders” who comprehensively understand how lenders underwrite, approve, and portfolio manage leveraged loans to companies like yours. Before reaching Group Head roles, our leaders held positions up the promotion ladder within the underwriting function (Credit Analyst, Banking Officer, AVP, VP and SVP). As such, we are keenly aware of what each person at the financial institutions involved in the process does and what they are looking for in both a positive and negative sense. In short, we are experts at successfully positioning a company to obtain debt capital from financial institutions.
For whom?
ECS caters to borrowers with "more challenging needs," whose debt won’t fit into underwriting requirements of the regulated banks. For many of our clients, regulated banks can often take care of a portion of our client’s debt load, but not all of the debt picture.
The History
ECS was founded in 2014 by Pete Connoy to provide Debt Optimization Services for Middle Market Borrowers with debt capital financing needs that are more challenging and “don’t quite fit into major bank’s underwriting guidelines.” After 20 years in debt capital finance, our Founder established ECS to lead middle market borrowers through the arduous and often arcane financing process enabling borrowers to obtain superior results.
Our legacy and perspective come from deep experience as both a lender and borrower of debt capital—closing transactions in the billions of dollars while serving in each capacity. ECS excels at helping the entrepreneur/operator procure the most optimal results that the entire debt market will bear given experience on “both sides of the table.” ECS is experienced in all types of debt capital including asset-based lending, cash flow lending, acquisition/growth financing, infrastructure build-out, leveraged recapitalizations, buy-outs, mezzanine/junior debt or general refinancing to improve borrowing cost and covenant flexibility.
The Facts
ECS is Highly Specialized - Singularly focused on Debt Capital Transactions
ECS is solely focused on debt transactions. ECS does not operate in the greater Investment Banking universe of M&A and equity raises.
ECS has accomplished what you are trying to do—be an optimal debt borrower
From 2006-2012, our Founder was VP of Corporate Finance for PAETEC Communications, a publicly traded middle market competitive telecom provider that grew to become a Fortune 1000 company. During this 2006-2012 timeframe, PAETEC grew its EBITDA from $100MM to over $400MM. In this capacity, our Founder raised $2.7 Billion in debt capital in 8 separate transactions—all the while consistently procuring market leading qualitative and quantitative terms that outperformed PAETEC’s single B corporate credit rating.
ECS only represents middle market borrowers (minimum $25MM borrowing need)
There are no potential conflicts of interest with ECS’ practice. The financial institutions ECS negotiates with on your behalf will not be paying ECS a fee to do work for them on other transactions.