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

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.

Consumer Retail M&A: Building Durable Competitive Advantage

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Consumer Retail M&A: Building Durable Competitive Advantage

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.