Investment Management Firm’s Core Values and Fiscal Efficiency Goals Lead to Formation of Minority ESOP

Overview

Coho Partners, Ltd. (Coho), founded in 1999 and located in Berwyn, PA, is a leading investment management firm that focuses on providing downside protection during difficult periods and capturing consistent, competitive upside participation. Resolute in the firm’s direction, Coho’s asymmetric pattern of performance is designed to move against the current, and their portfolio structure optimizes efforts to protect and participate. Coho believes in the core values of integrity, transparency, focus, collaboration, humility and ownership.

Situation

Keeping consistent with the firm’s focus and core values, Coho Partners sought a way to provide ownership to their entire workforce, while also gaining tax efficiency to provide liquidity to the partners. With these goals in mind, it was determined that a minority employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) was the right fit.

Solution

Coho Partners engaged SES ESOP Strategies and its affiliated law firm, Stevens & Lee, to assist in the structuring and forming of a new minority ESOP, management of financial due diligence and closing the transaction. Coho’s shareholders sold 20% of the outstanding shares to the ESOP. In addition, the firm refinanced its existing debt in conjunction with the financing of the ESOP transaction into a new credit facility. SES professionals provided the company with an ESOP valuation estimate, plan structuring, execution of the ESOP and related legal services for the transaction. On October 29, 2021, Coho finalized the steps to establishing a minority ownership ESOP and retained status as a Subchapter S Corporation.

“Establishing a minority-owned ESOP at Coho Partners was the right choice for the firm’s culture and the benefit of both the partners and employees of our firm,” said Glenn Dever, President of Coho Partners. “The team at SES ESOP Strategies was instrumental in helping us successfully manage all of the complexities of the ESOP process and getting us to our goal.”

For more information about this transaction, please contact SES Chairman Jim Steiker at 215.508.5643 or Managing Director Kenneth Wanko at 215.285.7190.