Neil Johnson

Neil Johnson is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Lawrence, Evans & Co., LLC (LECO), a national boutique healthcare financial-advisory and investment-banking firm he started in 2003 with a colleague from New York. At the firm he leads deal sourcing and evaluation, transaction structuring, financing (both debt and equity), and fundraising. Over a career spanning more than 25 years he has completed over $1 billion of corporate-finance transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, equity and corporate debt financings, and distressed-asset acquisitions and divestitures.

Before founding LECO, Johnson worked at one of the largest asset-based healthcare lenders in the country and served as an underwriter at a national healthcare investment bank. Earlier in his career he managed more than $100 million in healthcare bond trading at a regional investment advisor, was involved with an internet startup in Germany, and began his career at First Chicago NBD (now part of JPMorgan Chase).

Johnson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Management from Albion College and an MBA from the Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business. At Albion he was a 1994 NCAA national football champion, a Hall of Fame member, and an NCAA Post-Graduate Scholarship recipient.

Beyond LECO, Johnson is an active board member of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) Columbus Chapter and a member of the Healthcare Business Management Association, the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the Turnaround Management Association, and the First Connect Bio Medical Steering Committee. He is a contributor to Harvard Business School educational programming, the founder of the annual Healthcare Capital Markets & Innovation Summit (HCMIS), and a co-founder of the Healthcare Development & Innovation Group (HDIG).

• Healthcare-first specialist. Nearly all of his dealmaking centers on healthcare sub-sectors: providers/facilities, senior housing, home health, behavioral health, RCM, health IT, data & analytics, life sciences, managed IT, and cybersecurity.
• Lower-middle-market focus. LECO targets private companies generally under ~$250 million in revenue, spanning startups, growth-stage companies, and distressed situations.
• Full-spectrum capital. Rather than writing a single fund's checks, he sources and structures capital across the stack — equity, corporate debt, real-estate finance, and turnaround/restructuring financing — and connects operators to private-equity and venture buyers.
• Innovation and networking as a deal engine. Through HCMIS and HDIG he explicitly ties capital to healthcare innovation; by his own account, nearly $400 million in deals have been completed in connection with the HCMIS summit.
• Themes he emphasizes. Recent HCMIS programming he has led has spotlighted private-equity investment in healthcare, AI in healthcare, value-based care, and healthcare cybersecurity.