ACON Investments

Kenneth Brotman, the founder and Managing Partner, leads investment strategy alongside Managing Partner Daniel Jinich. Chairman Arpad Busson provides strategic oversight, particularly regarding European limited-partner relationships. The firm operates an investment committee that reviews all major decisions, with a culture of partner-level involvement in each transaction given the operational complexity typical of carve-outs and cross-border deals.

ACON relies heavily on corporate-divestiture mandates and founder-family succession situations, particularly in Latin America. The firm's bilingual, bicultural presence across six offices in the Americas gives it an edge in transactions where personal trust and local legal fluency determine whether a seller will even engage. Its carve-out heritage — buying divisions that larger conglomerates no longer want — creates deal flow outside competitive auctions.

ACON is an institutional private equity firm, not a family office. It raises capital from external limited partners including pensions, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds alongside commitments from the firm's partners. The firm has closed five institutional funds and deploys capital on behalf of a broad LP base.

The firm targets control or shared-control positions with equity investments ranging from $25 million to $150 million. ACON often steps in as the first institutional capital in a family-owned business or as the buyer of a corporate division, meaning it typically takes a majority stake and actively participates in board governance and management-team construction.

Yes. While ACON has offices in São Paulo and Mexico City, its Andean-region presence — with offices in Bogotá and Lima — reflects an active appetite for deals in Colombia, Peru, and neighboring economies. The firm's distribution-focused investment in a Colombian publishing platform illustrates its willingness to operate in markets where local-partner relationships matter more than GDP scale.

ACON acquired Marucci Sports, a Louisiana-based baseball bat manufacturer, in 2014. The deal was a classic carve-out from a larger holding company, consistent with the firm's pattern of buying orphaned brands. Over an eight-year hold, ACON expanded Marucci's distribution into national retail chains and growing youth baseball markets before selling it to Compass Diversified in 2022 — demonstrating the firm's ability to operationalize a niche consumer brand and exit through a known buyer of middle-market companies.

The firm maintains permanent in-region teams with local legal and operating partners rather than flying in deal professionals from Washington for closing. This embedded model — with offices in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, all staffed with nationals of those countries — gives ACON the capability to structure transactions across multiple jurisdictions, navigate family-holding-company pyramids common in Latin America, and manage currency risk in a way that generalist US-based sponsors typically outsource.