Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
“It’s an entrepreneur’s dream, to replicate ourselves with somebody else’s money,” says Joel Spry, a broker with CFG Insurance Services Inc. in Minnetonka. The 120-person company was just sold to Associated Bank, the Minnesota headquarters of which is in Mendota Heights.
Eldon Oldre (OL-dree), who remains president, owned 89 percent of the company, which sells employee benefit plans such as group health, group dental, disability, group life, 401(k) and profit-sharing plans, workers comp and liability insurance. It also has a human resources consulting arm.
He started the company in 1974 and sold the lot in March. He says he didn’t set out to sell when he started working with a consultant a few years ago. “Because the company was growing quite fast and I’m a major owner, we needed to work on a perpetuation plan. Our working out a perpetuation plan brought us almost by accident to this situation,” Oldre says.
The headquarters will remain in Minnetonka. Associated Bank already owns an insurance office in Waukesha, Wisconsin, so CFG picked up 26 employees there. The bank holding company is based in Green Bay, where it commands about 35 percent market share, so that will be another expansion target. “You’d also geographically want to plant yourself in the middle of Wisconsin someplace, and have four locations across the state,” Oldre says.
Oldre plans to remain active operating the company, the new name of which is being worked out. “I hear from some people, well now Eldon can start taking some time off. The opposite is true,” he says. Nor has he thought much about not being the top boss any more. “Certainly it’s a change. But in terms of what I do personally, other than I’ve got a bigger playpen, it doesn’t seem much different.”
Eldon Oldre, CFG Insurance Services: 952.912.5205
