Private equity services

Drive certainty in investment decisions and confidence to close.

• Financial, tax, and operational due diligence

• IT, cybersecurity, and human capital assessments

• Deal structuring and purchase agreement insights

• Carveout and merger integration planning

• Post-transaction execution support

Our transaction advisory approach equips you with actionable intelligence to identify risks early, validate assumptions, and move forward with clarity. 

Accelerate execution and translate strategy into measurable performance.

• First 100 Days execution and finance stabilization 

• Governance models and decision rights frameworks 

• KPI infrastructure and performance tracking 

• Pricing, margin, and GTM optimization 

• Working capital and cost discipline 

• Add-on acquisition readiness and integration 

• Technology, data, and AI-enabled value creation 

We focus on the practical realities of execution, helping you establish operating cadence, improve decision-making speed, and sustain momentum across the hold period.

Deliver consistent reporting, maintain investor confidence, and scale efficiently across the portfolio.

• Fund audit and financial statement reporting 

• Tax compliance, planning, and K-1 preparation 

• Investor reporting processes and timelines 

• Valuation support and compliance readiness 

• GP and investment management company advisory 

Our coordinated audit and tax model helps ensure on-time, accurate deliverables and streamlined communication across fund and portfolio stakeholders.

We support buyers and sellers across every stage of the deal process, combining financial, tax, operational, and technical diligence with integration planning to enable informed decisions and successful closings.

We help you identify, prioritize, and execute the initiatives that drive enterprise value, to improve revenue growth, margin performance, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision-making.

Our audit and tax professionals enhance financial reporting quality, improve transparency, and support faster decision-making, to help portfolio companies operate effectively today while preparing for future transactions.

We deliver a coordinated approach to fund compliance, supporting audits, tax structuring, investor reporting, and regulatory requirements with a consistent, disciplined process designed for PE timelines.

Our Private Equity practice spans multiple industries, bringing specialized insight into sector-specific operational and financial drivers to ultimately deliver solutions that are directly aligned to the realities of your portfolio.

CohnReznick’s Private Equity practice brings together transaction advisory, value creation, audit, and tax through a single point of contact. One team carries context from diligence through the hold period to exit — so findings inform the 100-day plan, the 100-day plan informs value creation, and value creation informs the exit narrative. The result is faster execution, fewer coordination gaps, and downstream needs identified as planning items rather than late-stage surprises.

Attest services are provided through CohnReznick LLP

Deal teams should scope diligence across financial, tax, operational, commercial, IT, cybersecurity, and human capital workstreams – and begin well before the LOI. The issues that reprice or stall a deal most often sit outside the P&L: tariff-exposed supply chains, unreliable data, key-person dependence, sector- or company-specific compliance needs (e.g., CMMC certification timelines for government-adjacent targets). Stress-testing for indirect consumer exposure and underwriting AI transformation on realistic three-to-five-year horizons are among the areas where today’s middle-market diligence most frequently underinvests. 

Prioritize the work that damages the business if missed: reliable financials, lender reporting deadlines, and cash visibility ahead of the first debt payment. Then protect the foundational work that has no external deadline: a faster close, clean data, and a weekly operating cadence. In lower-middle-market businesses, this phase typically runs 120 to 180 days. The most common momentum killers are unclear ownership of responsibilities, treating the plan as a wish list rather than an operating system, and overloading a management team that arrives post-close already depleted. 

The gap between thesis and execution is usually sequencing and ownership, not strategy. Translate the thesis into initiatives built in 30-day intervals with named owners, defined outputs, and performance KPIs, prioritizing a series of early sprints that deliver visible top-line, bottom-line, or operational wins. Our team typically pulls on a selection of levers spanning five areas: commercial (pricing, revenue mix, margin), operational (working capital, SG&A, procurement), financial (close speed, forecasting, reporting), organizational (leadership gaps, incentives, scalability), and technology (tech stack, data quality, analytics). Address data quality first — dashboards built on unreliable data produce numbers no one acts on. An initiative is working when a single owner reports a moving KPI drawn from trusted data. 

Begin at least two years before a planned exit. Buyers expect a minimum of two preceding years of well-prepared financial statements that are materially consistent with U.S. GAAP, and that history cannot be compressed once a buyer is at the table. Items that create avoidable pressure when preparation starts late include undocumented add-backs, a slow close, EBITDA adjustments discovered under deal pressure, and auditor fit that surfaces too late.