Editorial Independence
Best Exit Advisors is an independent editorial publication. It is not owned by, affiliated with, sponsored by, or otherwise commercially connected to any exit advisory firm, M&A intermediary, investment bank, private equity firm, family office, or search fund. The publication does not accept advertising, sponsored content, native advertising, placement fees, affiliate commissions, or referral compensation from any advisor. Practitioners featured in the perspectives section are not informed of the feature in advance, do not approve their featured copy, and do not pay for the placement.
Sourcing
Empirical claims in articles are sourced to named industry research or publicly available data. The recurring source set includes: GF Data Resources (multiple bands and small-deal resilience reports), DueDilio (Quality of Earnings analysis), SRS Acquiom (Deal Terms Study), Bain & Company (private equity reports), CapitalPad (lower-middle-market private equity statistics), Stanford GSB (Search Fund Study), Cherry Bekaert (private equity trends), and Cordis Institute working papers on SSRN. Citations appear at the end of each article in the form publisher, publication title, year, with hyperlinks where the source is published online.
Practitioner commentary featured on the perspectives page is drawn from published working papers, public articles, podcast transcripts, or recorded interviews. The publication does not quote private conversations without attribution and does not invent or paraphrase quotes that have not been said publicly.
Conflict-of-Interest Policy
When a practitioner featured in the perspectives section has a commercial relationship with an entity referenced in the article, the relationship is disclosed in the perspective's attribution line. The relevant disclosure includes the practitioner's firm affiliation, their published title, and the publication venue of the cited commentary.
The publication does not feature practitioners whose commercial relationships create a material conflict with the editorial integrity of the perspectives page. "Material conflict" is interpreted strictly: a practitioner advising a buyer in a sector covered in editorial commentary is not a material conflict; a practitioner whose published commentary is in the practice's marketing copy is.
Practitioner Selection
Featured practitioners are selected based on the analytical contribution of their published work to the editorial frame of the publication. The selection criteria, in order of weight: (1) original published methodology or framework documented in working papers, public articles, or recorded talks; (2) recurring analytical contribution across multiple pieces of published work; (3) demonstrable field experience in the lower-middle-market segment; (4) willingness to discuss methodology in public venues rather than only in proprietary client work.
The publication does not select for prominence, firm size, transaction count, or media presence. A practitioner with a thin transaction record and a strong published framework is preferred to a practitioner with a thick transaction record and no published methodology, because the published methodology is what the publication writes about.
Corrections and Updates
Errors of fact, in citations, in attribution, or in characterization of practitioner commentary, are corrected as soon as identified. The corrected article carries a dated note at the bottom of the article body indicating what was corrected and when. The publication does not retroactively edit articles without a correction note. Substantive updates that reflect new industry research or revised analytical framing are timestamped in the article's dateModified property in the article's schema.org markup.
Corrections, tips, or factual challenges can be submitted via the contact form and are reviewed within five business days.
What This Publication Does Not Cover
The publication does not cover ongoing transactions in real time. It does not name specific buyers, sellers, or deals in editorial commentary unless those deals are publicly disclosed and cited from public sources. It does not publish content that is functionally a press release for any firm.
The publication does not cover advisor or firm misconduct in editorial commentary. Misconduct allegations against specific firms or practitioners are handled by regulators, professional associations, and litigation; the publication's editorial frame is methodology, not enforcement.