Tail End Capital Partners Participates in Frontenac Continuation Vehicle

Pittsburgh, PA – August 2, 2023: Tail End Capital Partners (“Tail End”) completed a GP-led secondary investment into an oversubscribed continuation vehicle (“CV”) managed by Frontenac, a Chicago-based private equity firm focused on investing in lower middle market buyout transactions in the consumer, industrial, and services industries. The  CV’s objective was to unlock liquidity to Frontenac’s successful investment in Motion & Control Enterprises (“MCE”) while providing additional capital to support MCE’s future growth. 

MCE is a leading industrial distributor and services provider of highly engineered, full lifecycle fluid, flow, automation, and air solutions. Frontenac acquired MCE in 2018 in partnership with its current CEO, Charley Hale. Mr. Hale worked with Frontenac as part of their CEO1ST executive-centric approach to sourcing opportunities. Together, Frontenac and Mr. Hale have completed 10 acquisitions and grown EBITDA by more than 15x. The CV provides MCE with the resources to accelerate organic growth initiatives and pursue additional acquisition opportunities.

“Frontenac has been a trusted partner from the beginning, and they’ve supported our organic and acquisition-based growth.  We’ve transformed MCE into a company that was recognized in 2023 by Modern Distribution Management on its Top Industrial Distributors list. This additional investment allows us to extend our partnership with Frontenac as we continue to scale our company,” said Mr. Hale.

Tail End is excited to participate in this transaction with the world class management team at MCE and Frontenac, a high-quality GP with a 50+ year track record. The CV will allow more time and investment capital to maximize the MCE’s value for all its stakeholders while providing interim liquidity with attractive returns for a portion of the 2018 investors.