Robert E. MacLeod

“My business is more than a spreadsheet and an EBITDA multiple, it’s a story. Then we met Rob, our storyteller.”

Rob views himself as a “guidance counselor” for private company business owners. He is most often found leading Bigelow client engagements to find the best next owner at the right time for the right reasons. Rob believes weaving technical expertise with a focus on the personal unlocks creative strategies that prove consistently beneficial to Bigelow clients. He is keenly interested in the multi-dimensional nature of preparing clients and management teams for a successful transaction.

Rob’s technical foundation was gleaned from a decade of hard duty—learning the ropes of corporate finance and investment banking in Los Angeles and New York. He held positions in the investment banking divisions of Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, Sutro & Company, and Koffler & Company.

Rob earned his Master of Business Administration, with honors, from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Middlebury College.

Rob is FINRA licensed Series 7, 24, 28, 63, 79, 99.

• What do you love most about EOMs?

  Act fast with big hearts. I love that EOMs get things done quickly. They don’t over-think or have a committee to review everything in detail. What makes sense to them, they do, and they do it fast. I also love that they have big hearts caring deeply about their people, culture, customers, community, and family.

• Describe the way you live: are you neat or messy?

  Neat to a fault. When I was a young kid I used a Dymo label writer to label all the shelves in our woodshop. If things are not organized, it drains my energy. So my mom's mantra of “a place for everything and everything in its place” is for me.

• What was your worst job?

  I worked as a carpenter on a movie crew in Jackson Hole. We filmed a scene in Teton National Park and used large fans to blow flakes of dried mash potatoes to mimic a snowstorm. In the spring the snow melted and created a thick one-foot layer of mashed potatoes in the snowpack. The animals loved eating the mashed potatoes, but the park rangers were not so thrilled. My crew worked for a week to shovel out and remove several tons of mashed potatoes by hand!

• What risk in your life are you happy that you took?

  I moved to Los Angeles to start a career in corporate finance from Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I had been a ski racing coach. I had never lived in a city, knew only two people, and moved the week of the Rodney King riots! Thankfully, a risky move starting fresh in Los Angeles led me to a series of interesting jobs, graduate school, and a path for a really interesting career in M&A. Most importantly, I met my wife (who grew up in NH) in LA on a blind date.