Leaders in Law is delighted to endorse Stephen Cummings as our exclusive Business Exit Planning expert in Canada. Through this endorsement, we are pleased to highlight his position on our leading global platform, which connects distinguished legal professionals with businesses, in‑house counsel, and referrers worldwide. Our exclusive expert positions are reserved for practitioners who demonstrate consistently high standards of professionalism and sector knowledge.
Stephen is the Founder, CEO and Managing Partner of Rizolve Partners, based in Toronto. He is a leading advisor and financial expert. He trained with Deloitte and is a Chartered Accountant (CPA) as well as a Certified Exit Planning Advisor. He has worked as a global CFO and extensively in the Canadian Private Equity and Venture Capital industries.
Rizolve Partners was established 10 years ago as a specialist exit planning firm, skilled in value growth for the lower mid-market. The firm works with private company business owners and their management teams three to five years ahead of a transition in order to improve business value and readiness to exit, since it is not unusual for business value to be doubled or tripled within that planning horizon.
Today, the firm consists of advisers that facilitate business planning and the identification of key goals of the business owner, which are then translated into a roadmap for the client to arrive at optimal value within an agreed-upon time frame. The professionals at Rizolve distinguish themselves by working week in, week out with the business owners to create actions that achieve goals, while also clearing away any hurdles that arise along the way.
To this end, Rizolve’s team is made up of multidisciplinary, global executives possessing senior-level experience. Their credentials are international in scope, and their individual skill sets involve working strategically with businesses to articulate their vision while creating plans to realise their long-term aspirations.
The team’s accumulated transaction experience is pivotal in allowing then to create exit plans that optimise value throughout business liquidity events. Their portfolio of clients are at differing stages of their individual roadmaps in product and service industries, though all of them are private companies with owners who, typically, have a requirement to gain liquidity via their largest personal asset – their business. Mr Cummings noted: “Many of them have never sold a business; all have pivoted to a value mindset; and several are executing an exit plan. We are currently working with investment bankers to execute the transaction process, having built growth plans, data rooms and facilitated the production of sales collateral!”
Rizolve’s client base is expanding in parallel with its developing international reputation. As a result, the firm has been the recipient of several international awards that recognise the key improvements it has made to clients’ business value.
Mr Cummings also noted that “We are a progressive firm, and so AI is increasingly used in our business to improve the quality of our output, compress time frames and deepen our research into client businesses to produce more sophisticated analyses. The future is bright – marrying technology’s potential with our significant coordination skills to place our clients’ ‘story’ in the best light to capture value. In the coming year, we look forward to progressing our clients through the value continuum – as well as concluding transaction liquidity for some”.
If you require assistance in this area, please contact Stephen Cummings (email: scummings@rizolve.ca or cell: 1 416 561 8557) directly or the Leaders in Law head office: info@leaders-in-law.com
