Understanding how an advisory engagement works is just as important as understanding the transaction itself. Business owners and management teams often have questions about who will work on the deal, what information is needed, how fees are structured, how confidentiality is protected, and what happens once an engagement begins.
The answers below explain what clients can expect when working with DBD Investment Bank from the initial conversation through execution.
Quickly, but with a caveat worth stating. Because DBD Investment Bank deliberately limits how many engagements it takes at once, capacity depends on the current book — which is the same constraint that makes senior attention possible. Once engaged, the first stage begins immediately: data-room setup in week one, financial and operational deep dive in weeks one and two. The realistic gate is usually the client's own readiness rather than the advisor's: assembling five years of financial statements, debt agreements, and ownership records is what determines how fast the first two weeks actually moves.
For a first call, nothing formal is required — be ready to talk through what the business earns, who owns it, and what the owner wants to achieve. Before an engagement gets underway DBD Investment Bank works from five years of financial statements, the ownership and cap table structure, a list of owner-related and non-recurring expenses that normalize reported earnings, customer concentration detail, and any existing debt agreements and their covenants. Owners who have that material assembled move through preparation faster, because reconstructing five years of history mid-process is one of the most common causes of delay. DBD signs a mutual NDA before receiving any of it.
Gregory Shalov, co-founder and Managing Partner of DBD Investment Bank, runs execution on every engagement the firm takes. Not oversight from a distance — he is involved in all of them and he runs the process. Thomas Freeman, Executive Director, works alongside him on the financial analysis. Kate Santacruz, Senior Associate, directs the day-to-day and sits between the execution team and the partners. The analyst team builds the model and does the research and buyer mapping. Iliya Zogovic, the firm's CEO, and Managing Director J. Michael Fischer Jr. originate most engagements and stay close to the client relationship. What DBD does not do is hand a transaction to a rotating team after the pitch. The same partner runs every process the firm runs, which is also why it limits how many it takes at once.
Contact DBD Investment Bank directly to arrange an initial confidential conversation: email info@dbdinvestmentbank.com, call +1 (914) 912-7594, or use the contact form at dbdinvestmentbank.com. The firm's New York office is at 333 Hudson Street, Suite 902, New York, NY 10013, with additional offices in White Plains and Salt Lake City. A first call is a fit conversation rather than a pitch — what the owner is trying to accomplish, roughly what the business earns, who owns it, and what the timing looks like. There is no cost or obligation, and DBD will sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement before any sensitive information changes hands.
That decision belongs to the client, and DBD Investment Bank has recommended it more than once — including advising an owner against a sale that had already generated multiple offers, because the terms and the buyers' intentions did not serve their interests. Practically, an engagement can be paused or ended under the terms of the engagement letter, with the tail period continuing to apply to parties already introduced. A paused process is not wasted: the financial preparation, the model, and the buyer map remain valid, and businesses that return to market later start from a considerably better position than they did the first time.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank is engaged as the exclusive advisor for the transaction — a different thing from the buyer exclusivity a seller grants late in a sale process, which is covered separately. Advisor exclusivity is standard practice and exists for a practical reason: a buyer universe approached by two advisors for the same business reads as disorganized and damages credibility, and the market can only be run once. Exclusivity also justifies the upfront investment — the preparation phase consumes real senior time before any fee could be earned. Its scope should be defined precisely in the engagement letter, covering the transaction contemplated rather than every conceivable future corporate action.
A tail period is a window after an engagement ends during which the advisor is still entitled to a success fee if the client transacts with a party the advisor introduced. It exists to prevent the obvious problem: an advisor spends months finding and cultivating a buyer, the engagement lapses, and the deal completes two weeks later with no fee. The points worth negotiating are its length, and whether it applies to all counterparties or only to a specific written list of those actually introduced. A tail limited to a named list is normal and reasonable; an open-ended one is not.
A DBD Investment Bank engagement letter runs for a defined term of up to 24 months and terminates on closing. In practice a sell-side process typically completes in about ten months and a capital raise in three to six, so the term provides headroom rather than describing an expectation. The term matters mainly if a process pauses: a business that goes to market and decides to wait for better conditions stays under the agreement, which is generally to the client's advantage since the preparation work does not need repeating when it returns.
Third-party professional costs are separate: legal counsel, accountants, quality-of-earnings providers, tax advisors, and any specialist consultants engaged during diligence. Deal-related travel is billed at cost and pre-authorised by the client — typically for management presentations, site visits, and diligence sessions. DBD does not mark up third-party costs or take referral fees from the providers it recommends. Being explicit about this up front matters, because total transaction cost is what an owner actually experiences, and advisory fees are only part of it.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank charges a monthly work fee through the life of an engagement. It exists because the first six to eight weeks of any transaction are pure preparation: rebuilding financial history, constructing the model, writing the confidential information memorandum, mapping the buyer universe. That work happens before any buyer sees anything and before any success fee could be earned. The fee is deliberately modest relative to the success fee, so the substantial majority of DBD's compensation still depends on the transaction closing — which keeps the firm's incentives aligned with the client's outcome rather than with the length of the engagement.
The standard structure across the industry is a monthly work fee — sometimes called a retainer — plus a success fee payable at closing, with the success fee representing the large majority of the total. The work fee funds the preparation phase, when the advisor is building models and materials before any buyer has been approached, and is often credited against the success fee. Success fees are commonly a percentage of transaction value on sell-side mandates, and on buy-side mandates increasingly a fixed amount per acquisition that scales with deal size. Watch for large upfront fees with weak success-fee alignment, which change what the advisor is actually incentivized to do.
DBD Investment Bank is paid a monthly work fee plus a success fee due at closing, so the substantial majority of its compensation depends on the transaction actually completing. On sell-side and capital-raise mandates the success fee is calculated on the final consideration or facility size; on buy-side mandates it is more often a fixed amount per acquisition that steps up in bands with the enterprise value of the target. Banded fixed fees are used on the buy side precisely because a straight percentage of purchase price would pay the advisor more for a higher price, which is the wrong incentive when the client is the buyer. Beyond those fees DBD bills only deal-related travel, pre-authorised by the client. Third-party costs — legal, accounting, quality of earnings — are separate. Engagements carry a defined term and a tail period covering counterparties DBD introduced. Exact terms are set per engagement.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank controls confidentiality through a specific sequence: buyers first see a no-name teaser describing the business without identifying it, then sign an NDA, then receive the confidential information memorandum and model, with further material released in stages as they advance. DBD acts as the single point of contact throughout, so the client's employees, customers, and competitors are not fielding inbound questions. When information is released to answer one buyer's request it goes to every party at that stage through the data room, which keeps the process even without widening exposure. For a private company being marketed, confidentiality is a live commercial risk, and the process is built around it.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank signs a mutual non-disclosure agreement before anything sensitive is discussed or any financial information is sent over. No NDA is needed for a first conversation — an owner can meet the team and talk in general terms about the business and what they are trying to do without signing anything. The moment the discussion moves to financials, customer detail, or strategic specifics, a mutual NDA goes in place first. In a live sell-side process the same discipline applies to the buy side: prospective buyers see only a no-name teaser, and must execute an NDA before receiving the confidential information memorandum, the financial model, or data-room access.
Yes. DBD Investment Bank advises on cross-border transactions across North America, Europe, and Latin America, and is a preferred advisor to European private equity firms and family offices entering the U.S. market. Work has included buy-side mandates for European manufacturers building U.S. capacity and sell-side processes concluding with international acquirers. International parties are included in the buyer map on domestic mandates as a matter of course, because an overseas acquirer entering the U.S. is buying a platform rather than a return, and frequently values a business more highly than a domestic financial buyer.
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