Joseph Beer

Joseph Beer is an attorney and M&A operations executive who has spent his career shepherding the sale of privately held businesses. He joined Sun Acquisitions in 2013 and today serves as Vice President of Operations, where he oversees closing coordination across all of the firm's engagements. In practice, he manages the mechanics of getting deals across the finish line — running data rooms, supervising due diligence, project-managing transactions, and working alongside buyers, sellers, and their accountants, attorneys, and lenders to reach the closing table efficiently. By his firm's account he has been involved in roughly 200+ completed transactions.

Before Sun Acquisitions, Beer practiced law at a mid-sized firm focused on banking, financial services, and corporate transactions, and earlier worked at a firm serving entrepreneurial startups. His legal background is central to his role: he has extensive experience negotiating purchase agreements, commercial leases, and other transaction contracts.

Beer earned his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then a J.D. with a certificate in business law from Chicago-Kent College of Law. While at Chicago-Kent, he interned with the Illinois Institute of Business Law, helping rewrite portions of the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act. His LinkedIn headline also references a "Managing Director, Lakeside…" role, suggesting outside or more recent activity, though details of that were not independently verifiable from public sources.

Sun Acquisitions itself was established in Chicago in 2000 and acquired by Managing Partner Domenic Rinaldi in 2005. The firm provides end-to-end M&A advisory for lower-middle-market companies and reports having completed 500+ transactions across a broad range of industries.

*Framed as Sun Acquisitions' transaction focus, since Beer operates as a sell-side M&A advisor rather than an equity investor:*

• Advises on buying and selling established, cash-flowing privately held companies in the lower middle market — not early-stage or seed financings.
• Typical enterprise value of $2M–$75M per transaction.
• Sector breadth includes manufacturing, food & distribution, healthcare/home care, transportation & logistics, HVAC, construction, technology, staffing, and industrial products.
• Beer's personal value-add is closing execution: due-diligence management, contract negotiation, and coordination among all deal parties to keep transactions on schedule.
• In his own words (from his "Best Practices for Sellers" podcast), he stresses that sellers should prepare early, keep clean books and records, and be responsive during due diligence to avoid deals stalling before the closing table.