Martin Wolf is an American investment banker who is currently head of M&A advisors, a global M&A Advisory firm specializing in buy/sell transactions in information technology. He is known for his commentary on current industry trends,as well as for his firm's white papers and materials tracking and measuring information technology valuations across key IT sectors in the geographies of the United States, India, and China. Wolf graduated from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
His proprietary analysis and commentary has been featured on news sites such as The Wall Street Journal, CNET, Fast Company, GigaOM, CNBC, CRN, Yahoo! Finance and other tech news organizations.
Wolf has also been a keynote speaker at multiple industry conferences, including the China International Software and Information Service Fair in Dalian, two conferences organized with the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce on Cross-Border M&A, HP’s American Partners Conference, AmCham Shanghai IT Industry Committee, and other trade conferences such as Brand Tech Forum, CRN Roundtable, Software Publishers Association, VARBusiness Roundtable, Information Technology Alliance and the ASP Channel Conference.
Career
Wolf's tech M&A background began in the early 1990s when he served as President of the Franchise and Distribution Division of ComputerLand. He subsequently founded its Datago distribution business, which was sold in 1994 to Merisel, Inc.
In 1997, he founded martinwolf | M&A Advisors, a middle market IT M&A specialist, and serves as its president. Located in Walnut Creek, CA, martinwolf has been involved in more than 140 transactions with companies located in 19 countries. The firm is a recognized authority on companies in the IT Supply Chain, IT Services, Tech-Enabled BPO, and Software and SaaS spaces, and has completed more transactions with companies listed as members of CRN's Solution Provider 500 list than any other investment bank. Clients have included seven Fortune 500 companies.
Notable transactions completed by the firm include advising Inacom on its sale to Datatec's Westcon group in 2002, creating the company's "Voda One" division and making Datatec the largest Lucent voice distributor in the industry. The company also advised Saber Software in their acquisition by private equity firm Accel-KKR, which was acquired by EDS one year later and ultimately folded into Hewlett-Packard. Other notable transactions include advising Insight Enterprises on its acquisition of Comark in 2002 and advising Bain Capital in its 2012 investment in VXI Global Solutions.
In addition to its regular analysis, which includes the quarterly martinwolf IT Index, the company has interviewed CEOs from companies including Logicalis, SS&C Technologies, ChinaSoft International, Arrow Electronics, Systemax, Softchoice, CDW, Insight Enterprises and the Herjavec Group regarding their views on contemporary market trends.