The mandate
A managing director leading business-services origination at a middle-market private equity firm, responsible for proprietary deal flow across the U.S. and Canada and for the relationships that produce it.
The operating constraint
The firm’s best opportunities rarely arrive through a banker’s process. They come from knowing which sponsor-held companies have been owned for six or seven years, which funds are past their investment period, which borrowers face a maturity, and who at the firm already knows the deal team. Today that knowledge is scattered across a data terminal, BDC filings nobody reads systematically, sponsor websites, and the MD’s own memory. Analysts assemble lists that are out of date by the time they are formatted, and the reason to call is missing from the spreadsheet.
The multi-agent architecture
A saved mandate defines the universe: U.S. and Canadian operating companies, US$10–50 million EBITDA, controlling PE ownership, held six years or longer. A discovery agent retrieves candidates from the licensed company backbone and from BDC investment schedules. An ownership verifier links borrower entities to operating companies and builds a dated timeline of acquisitions, owning funds, continuation transfers, and exits, recording the original sponsor and the current vehicle separately. A financial qualifier reconciles dated EBITDA and currency, keeping estimates labeled. A relationship agent surfaces the firm’s permitted contact history with each sponsor. A briefing editor ranks fit, seller pressure, business risk, and evidence confidence separately and lists what still needs verification. A monitoring agent refreshes disclosures and moves exited companies out of the active view.
The work product
- A maintained opportunity universe with sponsor, owning fund, hold period, dated EBITDA, seller signals, and evidence status for every company
- Company briefs with five sections: why this fits, why now, who to call, sources, next action
- Sponsor coverage maps with portfolio companies, fund vintages, exit patterns, and deal-team relationships
- A watchlist with dated observations and plain-language alerts routed to the relationship owner
The operating shift
The intended result is a managing director who arrives each morning to a short, prioritized briefing rather than a list to be cleaned. Conversations start with the sponsor context, the timing evidence, and the open questions already in hand. Analysts resolve entity matches and confirm financials in the same system. Models and slides are generated from the record when a company is worth advancing, not as the starting point.
Human-in-the-loop governance
The managing director decides which owners to approach and who makes the call. Agents never contact a company, sponsor, or intermediary. A long hold is recorded as a fact; sale intent is never inferred from it.