Ward McNally - The Road Atlas to Private Equity

In the early 1990s, Ward McNally's family began selling off Rand McNally, the 150-year-old mapmaking company his family controlled for five generations. Two of the divested businesses later went bankrupt. Ward was in college at the time, watched it happen, and eventually built a private equity firm around a simple, personal rule: never put himself in a position to look a founder in the eye and say he ran their business into the ground. This conversation traces how that history shaped everything from how long he holds companies to how much ownership he insists founders keep. We also talk about his widely admired deal network that he founded post-crisis and his long-abiding interest and thoughtful strategy around investing in defense.

Ward McNally founded McNally Capital in 2008 to continue his family's legacy of owning and operating private companies. Prior to founding the firm, Ward spent ten years investing in family- and founder-owned businesses.

Since founding McNally Capital, Ward has worked with hundreds of family offices and business owners with the dedicated purpose of supporting their objectives to create long-term value. Ward is currently the Chairman of FedData, Orbis, Xcelerate Solutions, Endurion, Patriot Group International (PGI), and TENICA Global Solutions. He is the former Chairman of ITS Logistics and Advanced Micro Instruments and the former board director of Genesys Aerosystems. He is also a member of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Visitors, the Young Presidents' Organization, and the Business Executives for National Security.

Before founding McNally Capital, Ward spent ten years as a partner with private equity firms The Edgewater Funds and Hammond Kennedy Whitney & Company ("HKW"). Previously, he worked in banking and financial services for Benedetto, Gartland & Company, where he focused on private placements for private equity funds, and Caremark International's Physician Resources Division, where he was a member of the M&A team. Ward began his career at Bank of America in their Financial Engineering and Risk Management Group.

Ward holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Please enjoy my conversation with Ward McNally.

McNally Capital: https://mcnallycapital.com

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