Director, Business Transitions

Job Summary

Business Transitions is Mercer Advisors' dedicated practice serving business owners, founders, and executives navigating M&A transactions and major liquidity events. We are the integrated, unconflicted planning layer that sits alongside the client's deal team. We pressure test valuation and deal process, model after tax proceeds in real time as terms shift and make sure the planning that protects the outcome happens before leverage disappears at LOI.

We are seeking a Director to grow this practice across our target markets. If you have spent your career in deal rooms and want to do work that follows the client through the most consequential financial moment of their life, this is the role.

How This Role Fits

This role lives in the space between banking, law, and financial advice, and that is what makes it valuable. You work alongside the client's deal team, not in place of it.

• Bankers negotiate terms and run the sale process. You help the owner understand what each term means for their after-tax outcome.
• Attorneys draft agreements and provide legal counsel. You translate deal mechanics into planning decisions the owner can act on.
• Your Mercer advisor colleague manages the ongoing relationship after close. You lead a structured handoff so the transition feels seamless.

If you want to sit at the center of all three and serve the owner through the moment that matters most, we would love to hear from you.

Essential Job Functions

Deal Execution

• Work directly on live transactions alongside Mercer's integrated advisory team across tax, estate, and financial planning as the deal side subject matter expert.
• Interface with clients' bankers, attorneys, and accountants to pressure test deal structure and translate deal mechanics into actionable planning decisions.
• Model after tax proceeds in real time as deal terms evolve across structure, earnouts, rollover equity, and tax treatment.
• Support internal prospect deal teams where a Mercer client or prospect is approaching a transaction and needs a credible deal voice to anchor the conversation and advance the relationship.
• Engage business owners before, during, and immediately after a transaction so planning strategy is integrated with deal execution from the earliest possible point.
• Facilitate a structured handoff to the client's dedicated Mercer advisor at close, ensuring a seamless transition from deal phase engagement to long term wealth management.

Market Development

• Build and own a COI (center of influence) referral network in your market, including lower middle market investment bankers, M&A attorneys, QoE firms, and deal accountants.
• Develop referral relationships through consistent outreach, direct personal engagement, and a long cycle business development approach that compounds over time.
• Represent the Business Transitions practice externally through industry events, speaking opportunities, and panel discussions as a credible voice on transaction dynamics and business owner financial planning.
• Collaborate with Mercer's regional advisory teams to identify existing clients approaching a liquidity event and coordinate the internal resources needed to serve them.
• Support business owner prospects referred through Mercer's existing growth channels, including custodial partners, digital advertising, and referral programs, as the deal-credible resource who advances and closes those relationships.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• 8 to 15 years of experience working directly on M&A transactions. Relevant backgrounds include lower middle market investment banking, M&A advisory, corporate development at private equity backed or founder led companies, M&A and transaction law, M&A tax and deal accounting, wealth advisory with a demonstrated transactional background serving business owner clients, and RIA focused M&A and corporate development.
• Demonstrated ability to understand and communicate deal structure, valuation, and transaction mechanics at a level that earns credibility with the client's deal team.
• Direct experience working with or advising privately held business owners, founders, or executives, not exclusively institutional or large cap corporate counterparties.
• Ability to operate as a generalist across deal dynamics, tax implications, and planning strategy without needing to be the deepest technical expert in any single discipline.
• Strong relationship instincts. You build trust quickly, maintain it over long cycles, and give professionals a reason to refer business to you.
• Comfort with ambiguity, deal complexity, and situations that do not go according to plan.
• Series 65 required, or ability to obtain within 90 days of hire. CFP, CFA, CPA, or JD a plus.
• Bachelor's degree. MBA, JD, or advanced degree preferred.
• Ability to travel within your market and periodically across the country.

Work Schedule

This professional role requires availability during standard business hours of Monday through Friday from 8AM to 5PM. At times, the role may have early or late hours to meet business tasks and deadlines for internal and external client needs.

Working Conditions

This position may be in a professional office environment or a dedicated home office workspace which is free of interruptions. Basic technology needs will be provided to satisfy position requirements. Routinely sitting and standing for periods of time. No heavy lifting over 10 lbs.

Application Deadline: The initial deadline for applications is 12/1/2026. Applications submitted after this date may still be considered on a rolling basis until the position/program is filled. We encourage all interested candidates to apply as early as possible. If a final decision has not been made by the initial deadline, subsequent applications will be reviewed as they are received.