In this episode of Solomon Connects, Solomon Partners Co-Head of Consumer Retail Group Jeff Derman joins M&amp;A Director Chris Moynihan to discuss how continuous disruption has reshaped the consumer retail sector and what separates today’s winners from the rest. They explore the importance of scale, operational agility, and disciplined strategy as companies navigate AI, inflation, tariffs, and shifting consumer behavior.

Consumer Retail M&A: Building Durable Competitive Advantage

Solomon Connects

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Solomon Connects

## Transcript

Welcome to Solomon Connects. I'm Brad Hildebrand, a director in the M&A Group, and today I'm joined by Jeff Derman, co-head of our consumer retail group. Jeff, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Chris. It's great to be here. First time on Solomon Connects, hopefully not my last. Looking forward to the conversation today. Yeah, we've been doing a lot of these and we've gotten to speak with all of our newer industry groups. Consumer retail is obviously a little bit different. You're the first group that we had in the firm, the heritage of Solomon.

So why don't you talk a little bit about since you joined and how the group's evolved since you're joining? Yeah, happy to. I joined in the summer of 2009. It was the height of the Great Recession at that point. And people were wondering, is the American consumer ever going to fully recover? It was a bit of an existential moment for the sector and for the industry overall. Certain subsectors that I covered were just decimated. I saw deals in process die.

I had signed transactions terminate. But, you know, when things did come back, the disruptions weren't over. In fact, retail has been defined by continuous disruption and that's post-recession austerity, then the rise of e-commerce, Amazon's dominance, and then after some seeming quiet,

of course, COVID, supply chain chaos, most recently tariffs and so on. But notably, the sector's adapted every time. Resilience is the defining characteristic of this industry and it's gratifying to see great management teams help it evolve. We are rooted in the retail sector, as you know. When I joined, we were really more of a corporate-oriented firm.

We did a lot of strategic buy-side work with a number of industry leaders and that gave us terrific insights. What was winning and why, and what was losing and why. And our sector expertise made us the go-to trusted partner for boards and owners to figure out how to navigate everything as markets and trends shifted.

As we scaled, we've become a little more tilted toward sell-side work and leading retailers continue to seek us out for getting the best outcome possible for that final monetization event. It's also included more public company work, you know that from your perch in the M&A group, where we often collaborate. And, you know, that's a lot of reliance on our senior team's longstanding experience.

I will say one thing that hasn't changed over my 17 years, it's our device being rooted in deep industry expertise. It's our insights on where the consumer is going, not just where they've been recently. It's the vision into understanding where M&A can provide a superior outcome to our clients and equally where it cannot. We try to be very candid and clear with our boards and owners in answering those questions.

And look, if there's a deal to do, one thing that hasn't changed is the environment remains incredibly complicated, more complicated today than it...

Consumer Retail M&A: Building Durable Competitive Advantage

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
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Consumer Retail M&A: Building Durable Competitive Advantage

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.