DBD Investment Bank advises private companies and select institutional clients on mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, and financial restructuring. This section answers common questions about the firm, its team, the types of clients and transactions it works with, its experience across industries and geographies, and how its advisory model is structured.
Use the questions below to learn more about DBD's capabilities, experience, leadership, and approach to middle-market transactions.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank is an independent boutique investment bank — not a division of a commercial bank, a bulge-bracket firm, or a larger holding company, and with no lending, trading, or asset-management business alongside its advisory work. That structure is why the firm can focus entirely on middle-market M&A, capital formation, and restructuring, and why a senior banker leads each engagement rather than a rotating deal team. DBD describes its model as bulge-bracket process delivered at boutique scale, with the concierge-level attention that comes from taking on a limited number of mandates each year.
The difference is who runs the process. At DBD Investment Bank, co-founder and Managing Partner Gregory Shalov runs execution on every engagement the firm takes — there is no rotating deal team and no handoff after the pitch. The firm limits how many mandates it accepts at once to make that possible. Its senior bankers came out of institutional seats — Gregory Shalov began his career at UBS, where he worked on M&A transactions valued at more than $20 billion including the sales of Weight Watchers and Nabisco Holdings — and DBD applies that same process to middle-market transactions larger banks will not staff. DBD also has no industry verticals, so no sector team has a standing buyer relationship to protect.
DBD stands for Double Black Diamond — the trail rating used for the most difficult terrain on a mountain. The founders chose it deliberately: the firm was built to take on the transactions that require technical skill, persistence, and creativity rather than the straightforward ones, and the name is a statement about the kind of work it wants. It is also a reasonable description of the client base, since a founder selling a business once in their life is attempting something with no margin for a second attempt.
DBD Investment Bank is a bespoke investment bank, founded in 2015, that advises private companies on mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, and financial restructuring. It works primarily with founder-led, family-owned, and privately held businesses generating $2 to $10 million of EBITDA, along with select institutional clients including private equity sponsors, family offices, and lenders, on both domestic and cross-border transactions across North America, Europe, and Latin America. DBD limits how many engagements it takes at once so that Gregory Shalov, co-founder and Managing Partner, can run execution on every one of them. The firm has offices in New York, White Plains, and Salt Lake City.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank advises on cross-border transactions across North America, Europe, and Latin America, and it deliberately includes international parties in every buyer map — an overseas acquirer entering the U.S. market will often value a business more highly than a domestic financial buyer, because it is buying a platform rather than a return. The firm is a preferred advisor to European private equity firms and family offices moving into the United States, has run buy-side mandates for European manufacturers building U.S. capacity, and has closed sell-side processes with international acquirers. Cross-border work adds complexity — currency, tax structuring, regulatory approvals, and running diligence across time zones — which is a reason to identify those buyers early in a process rather than late.
Yes, on both sides. DBD advises private equity firms, family offices, and independent sponsors as buy-side clients — sourcing and screening targets, running diligence, and arranging acquisition financing for platform builds and add-ons. It also sells companies to private equity firms on behalf of owners, and arranges the debt financing that supports sponsor-backed transactions. That two-sided exposure is deliberate: an advisor who regularly represents financial buyers knows how they underwrite, where they push on terms, and what their investment committees actually need to see, which is directly useful when representing a seller across the table from one.
DBD Investment Bank does not work in oil and gas or real estate. It does not act for both sides of the same transaction. It does not take on more engagements than its senior team can personally staff, which is a deliberate constraint rather than a capacity problem. And it is not a broker: it does not list businesses, and it does not run standardized processes at volume. Being explicit about the boundaries is more useful than claiming universal coverage — an owner in oil and gas is better served knowing immediately, and everyone else gets a clearer picture of what the firm actually is.
Probably — and where DBD Investment Bank has not worked in a sector before, that is rarely the constraint. The firm has closed transactions across more than a dozen industries and takes on new ones, because what determines the outcome of a middle-market sale is the quality of the financial preparation, the completeness of the buyer map, and how competing offers are negotiated against each other — the same disciplines in every sector. DBD builds the industry knowledge for each engagement from primary research and direct conversations with buyers in that market, which is also how it finds acquirers a sector specialist would already have on a list. The exceptions are oil and gas and real estate.
DBD Investment Bank is industry-agnostic by design: its core expertise is running transaction processes, and that skill transfers across sectors. The firm has no dedicated industry verticals and no standing buyer relationships to protect, so it builds the buyer map from primary research on every engagement rather than working a familiar list. Completed and live work spans industrials, technology, telecommunications, transportation and logistics, business services, construction, chemicals, aerospace and defense, fitness and healthcare, education and edtech, financial services and fintech, and consumer and retail — a sample of where DBD has worked, not a limit on where it will. The two areas DBD does not cover are oil and gas and real estate.
DBD Investment Bank works with three groups. Business owners — founder-led and family-owned companies, usually first-time sellers, pursuing an exit, a partial sale, growth capital, or a shareholder buyout. Financial buyers — private equity firms, family offices, and independent sponsors doing platform builds, add-on acquisitions, and portfolio realizations, plus the debt financing that supports them. And special situations — distressed asset sales, lender-led and receivership processes, operational turnarounds, and complex cross-border or multi-party transactions. The common thread is a transaction where the outcome depends on how well the process is run rather than on the size of the balance sheet behind it.
DBD Investment Bank works with private companies generating roughly $2 million to $10 million of EBITDA. Clients are typically founder-led or family-owned businesses pursuing a full or partial exit, a recapitalization, growth or acquisition capital, or a restructuring, and are frequently first-time sellers for whom the transaction is a once-in-a-lifetime event. The firm also advises private equity sponsors, family offices, and lenders on acquisitions, platform builds, and special situations. Businesses outside that earnings range are considered case by case where the situation is complex or the asset is unusual — the range describes where DBD does most of its work, not a hard gate.
Selectively, and always with client consent. Many middle-market transactions are private by agreement — the parties do not announce them, and the terms are confidential — so a published list is never a complete record of a firm's work in this segment. DBD describes representative transactions by type, sector, and structure rather than naming clients as a matter of course. When assessing any advisor in this market, the more useful test than a published deal list is direct references from owners who completed comparable transactions.
Ask for them directly. DBD Investment Bank provides references on request from three categories: former clients who completed transactions, professional advisors — attorneys and accountants — who have worked alongside the firm on deals, and capital providers and buyers who have transacted with it. The most useful of those is usually the second group, because a lawyer or accountant who has sat through a process with an advisor has seen how they behave when something goes wrong, which is what a reference call should actually be testing.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank's professionals came from institutional seats before joining the firm. Gregory Shalov began his career at UBS, working on M&A transactions valued at more than $20 billion including the sales of Weight Watchers and Nabisco Holdings, and later invested at Hampshire Equity Partners. Iliya Zogovic led ONEtoONE Corporate Finance USA as chief executive and previously built and ran operating companies. Doug Gregory has led more than 50 transactions valued at over $6 billion, beginning in General Motors' Treasurer's Office. Others came from Nomura, Wells Fargo, regional commercial banks, CliftonLarsonAllen, and Baker McKenzie, where Philip Alberstat was global head of media law.
The DBD Investment Bank team brings more than 100 years of combined experience across investment banking, commercial banking, private equity, and company operations. The mix is deliberate: the same engagement is staffed by people who have executed institutional M&A processes, sat on the lending side of a credit committee, invested as principals, and built and sold their own businesses. For a founder selling once, the operator perspective is usually the part that matters. Both founders have built and sold their own companies, and that shows up in advice that accounts for what a transaction does to the business, the employees, and the owner — not only what it does to the purchase price.
DBD Investment Bank is led by its two founders: Iliya P. Zogovic, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Gregory Shalov, Founder and Managing Partner. The senior team includes Managing Directors J. Michael Fischer Jr. and Philip Alberstat, who heads the firm's West Coast coverage and leads its technology, media, and telecom practice; Executive Directors Thomas Freeman and Doug Gregory; and Maxwell Walters, Director of Growth and Partnerships, based in Salt Lake City. Kate Santacruz is Senior Associate. Gregory Shalov runs execution on every engagement the firm takes.
DBD Investment Bank was founded in 2015 and has closed more than 100 transactions across M&A, capital formation, debt placement, and restructuring. Of signed engagements taken to market, more than 95% reached a close. That record spans sell-side and buy-side M&A, growth and acquisition financing, private credit and institutional debt, and restructurings both before and after a bankruptcy filing, in sectors from industrials and healthcare to technology, consumer, and business services. Across their full careers, including institutional roles held before joining the firm, DBD's bankers have worked on over $80 billion in combined transaction value.
A deliberately limited number. DBD Investment Bank restricts how many engagements it runs concurrently because one person — co-founder and Managing Partner Gregory Shalov — runs execution on all of them, and that only works at a certain volume. The constraint is what makes the model possible rather than a limitation on it. For a client it means the process is run by the same partner from start to finish rather than by whoever is free. For the firm it means turning work away. It is the clearest structural difference between a boutique and a larger bank, where a small mandate competes for attention against much larger ones.
DBD Investment Bank has three offices. Its headquarters is at 333 Hudson Street, Suite 902, New York, NY 10013. It also has offices in White Plains, New York, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The firm works with clients across the United States and on cross-border transactions in Europe and Latin America, so location is rarely the constraint on an engagement — but the New York base matters for access to the buyer and lender universe, which is concentrated there.
No. DBD Investment Bank is not a registered broker-dealer and is not a member of FINRA or SIPC. DBD is an independent advisory firm. Its M&A work involves advising on and negotiating the transfer of ownership of privately held companies, conducted in reliance on the M&A broker exemption in Section 15(b)(13) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and comparable state exemptions. In capital formation, DBD introduces clients to banks, direct lending funds, and other institutional lenders and negotiates loan terms; it does not offer, solicit, or sell securities, and it does not place equity. DBD never receives, holds, or transmits client funds or securities.
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