Walden Businesses Inc., a 25-year-old consultancy focused on mergers and acquisitions, had seen a steady trickle of international deals since it helped a German firm buy a fabric manufacturer in Dallas in 2000, but it wasn't until it entered Central America a few years ago that the global side of the business really took off.
A new Walden office staffed by two consultants in San Jose, Costa Rica, is now handling a steady flow of inquiries from the region. A Paraguay company has tapped Walden to help purchase a Costa Rican firm, and a pepper farm in Central America is using Walden to find a buyer.
"My office in Costa Rica is probably averaging three to four calls a week out of South America," said Chet Walden, president and CEO, who noted that telecommunications in Argentina is just one of the hot sectors in the region.
All this began with a presentation Mr. Walden gave before a chamber of commerce in San Jose. One attendee was a board member for a private hospital there and approached Mr. Walden for help finding a buyer. Already with broad experience in the health care sector, Mr. Walden assembled a team in Costa Rica to get the deal done.
"That just led to other opportunities, so I did some market research about Central America and it is an extremely active market right now," Mr. Walden told Global Atlanta.
But the deals aren't always away from home. Walden, which employs 17 people in Atlanta, has seen its international deal volume triple over the last five years. It now accounts for about 20 percent of its overall business. Inquiries from countries like Denmark and China have been pouring in as foreign firms look for discounts in a slowly recovering U.S. economy.
"I think it's driven by uncertainty around the world. People know what they have now, what they can do now. They don't know what they're going to do in 2013," Mr. Walden said. "What's happening is that people are wanting to move money from their country into ours. Because of the dollar being down, they're getting a bigger value for their buck."
Walden's Dunwoody offices are bursting at the seams, but the company has no plans to add staff in Atlanta. Along with the Costa Rica office staffed by consultants Ignacio Zamora and Orlando Heilbron, Walden also recently merged with Buckhead Business Brokers of Atlanta and First Coast Business Advisors of Jacksonville, Fla., adding new locations to existing offices in Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C.
Global activity will continue to be integral to growth, Mr. Walden said.
"It was not really a surprise. We saw an opportunity, and we wanted to be out in front of our competition," he said.
For more information, visit www.waldenbus.com.
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