The People You Meet Run Your Deal
In the lower mid-market, the people who pitch the mandate are often not the people who execute it. We built the opposite: a partner-led boutique where the person you meet on day one is still negotiating your deal on the last.
Between us, we have built, bought, sold and advised companies across Europe and the Americas.
Sven Hensen
Sven co-founded the data and analytics consultancy mayato in 2007 and built it for a decade. When the shareholders decided to sell, he ran the transaction himself rather than hire an M&A advisor.
He stayed with the buyer through the earn-out, growing the business in revenue and profitability and earning the deferred purchase price in full. A few years later, the founder of a former competitor asked him to run his sale. Sven found the strategic buyer, negotiated the transaction and structured an earn-out the seller subsequently achieved.
He has advised founders on the sell side ever since. Before mayato, Sven worked in enterprise technology and consulting in Germany, Brazil and the United States. He works in German, English and fluent Portuguese.
Carlos Cesta
Carlos has spent more than thirty years in M&A, much of it inside the organizations acquiring companies. His corporate development career includes Verizon, dentsu, Presidio and NP Digital, across the Americas and Europe.
He has evaluated, priced, negotiated and executed acquisitions ranging from founder-led lower mid-market businesses to some of the largest transactions in telecommunications.
The relevance for a seller is direct: the person negotiating for you has spent decades being the person across the table.
Carlos began in investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney and also worked in private equity in São Paulo. Before finance, he was a naval engineer on the hydrodynamic design team of Brazil's first nuclear submarine.
The Bench Behind The Partners.
For each mandate, we assemble a small senior team around the transaction, financial modeling, technical diligence preparation and sector expertise.
For equity story and narrative strategy, we work with FutureStory, founded by former WIRED Germany Editor-in-Chief Nikolaus Röttger. Its story audit is integrated into our sell-side preparation under makanta's leadership.
The team is selected for the transaction. There is no rotating junior pool between you and the partners responsible for your deal.
Where We Work.
Berlin · Rome · New York Metro Area.
makanta was built for transactions that cross borders. Running Europe and the Americas within one process is not an extension of what we do. It is the core of it.