Ron Stacey

Ron Stacey is the founder and a Managing Director of Legacy Advisors, a Plano, Texas–based boutique investment bank specializing in middle-market mergers and acquisitions, corporate financing, financial restructuring, valuations, and fairness opinions. His corporate-finance experience spans corporate valuations, fairness opinions, debt and equity capital placement, leveraged and management buyouts, recapitalizations, refinancings, and M&A advisory. By the firm's account, he has been involved as an advisor in over 350 M&A transactions and has completed more than a billion dollars in senior debt, mezzanine, and equity financings.

Before founding Legacy Advisors, Stacey served as Executive Vice President at Barclays Business Credit, where he held $10 million of signature credit authority and was responsible for West Coast operations — including portfolio administration, syndications, originations, and underwriting. He is also an operator, not only a financier: he has owned, operated, and successfully exited privately held businesses, including a roughly $15 million filter-element manufacturing company serving the refining industry.

On the education side, Stacey holds a Bachelor of Arts from Pennsylvania State University, an MBA with a finance concentration from Temple University, and an Executive MBA from UCLA. He has additionally completed the Stanford University Program on Organizational Change, the Columbia University Leadership Program, and the Graduate Marketing Certificate Program at Southern Methodist University. He served with the United States Navy during the Vietnam era. He is a FINRA-registered representative (Series 7, 63) and investment-banking representative (Series 79).

Stacey has published practitioner articles for QuickRead ("News for the Financial Consulting Professional"), including "Building Sustainable Competitive Advantage" (2012) and "The Role of Earnouts in Acquisitions" (2013), and has been quoted in regional coverage of mid-market financing conditions.

• Operates primarily as an M&A and corporate-finance advisor to privately held, middle-market companies — not as a startup angel; deal types include LBOs, MBOs, recapitalizations, refinancings, and restructurings.
• Direct principal investing is channeled through the affiliated Legacy Capital Partners, which invests in management buyouts, recapitalizations, distressed/special situations, and high-growth opportunities.
• Emphasizes alternative and private-capital financing for companies that can't rely on traditional bank credit — in his own words to UT Dallas (2010): *"If you need growth capital, there are ways to get it, especially finance companies, which are non-regulated… The market is pretty active and driven mostly by private investors."*
• Values durable, intangible competitive advantage in a target — in his QuickRead writing he argues lasting advantage comes from intangible assets, switching costs, network economies, and cost advantage.
• Comfortable with structured deals, including earnouts, sale-leasebacks, and equipment leasing, to bridge valuation gaps and financing needs.