Thomas Ablum

Thomas ("Tom") S. Ablum has more than three decades of experience in corporate and strategic finance. His stated expertise spans private placements of debt and equity, leveraged buyouts, securitizations, asset-based financing, work-outs, turnarounds, strategic planning, financial structuring, troubled-debt restructuring, IPOs of debt and equity, and mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. Earlier in his career he held positions at the Walgreen Co., Household International, Borg-Warner Acceptance Corp., and Prudential-Bache Securities.

Before founding his own firm, Ablum was co-head of corporate finance at Rodman & Renshaw, Inc., the New York-based securities and broker/dealer firm, where he sourced deals, arranged financing for management buyouts, acquisitions, and private placements, performed valuations, and underwrote public securities. In 1988 he co-founded Ablum Brown & Company, a Chicago-based investment-banking boutique specializing in transaction advisory and private placements of equity and debt across corporate, real-estate, and project finance. The firm reports having sourced capital for transactions exceeding $5 billion in cumulative value.

Franklin Street Equity Partners, Inc. (founded 1997) was established by the principals of Ablum Brown & Company as a private-equity vehicle focused on leveraged acquisitions and management buyouts of middle-market companies. Ablum is listed as a General Partner/principal, and his email at the firm ([hidden]) runs on FSEP's fsequity.com domain.

Ablum earned a B.S. in Finance from the University of Illinois and an M.B.A. from DePaul University.

• Core strategy (FSEP): Leveraged acquisitions and management buyouts of established middle-market companies, not startups — writing roughly $5–25 million of equity into businesses valued up to ~$100 million.
• What earns a "yes": "Defensible business niches with significant barriers to entry" — product lines with strong name recognition, leading market positions, proprietary technology, or efficient manufacturing and distribution capabilities.
• Sectors: Middle-market manufacturing and value-added distribution based in the U.S. and Canada.
• Investment-banking side (Ablum Brown): Corporate finance (growth capital, management buyouts, recapitalizations), real-estate finance (income-producing properties and development), and project finance across North America.
• Caveat on stage: Some deal-flow platforms and databases describe broader interests (e.g., energy/commodities, real-estate development, and technology venture capital) and label him an "angel/seed" investor. These claims come from aggregators and are not corroborated by his firms' own primary materials, which describe an established-company, LBO/private-placement focus. Treat the "Seed Round" tag with caution.