Imperial Capital
The Firm
Imperial Capital, founded in 1989 on King Street in Toronto, invests in the US and Canadian mid-market with a thesis it states plainly: fragmented, recession-resistant, service-based sectors, companies from zero to $30 million of EBITDA, led by a proven entrepreneur or executive. The scoreboard is thirty-two platform investments since 1989 and, remarkably, 259 tuck-in acquisitions between 2021 and 2024, with a published 2.8x gross multiple across its recent funds.
The 259 tuck-ins in four years are the number a searcher should sit with, because each tuck-in is a small business bought by an Imperial platform. In this registry the platform is Certus, the pest-control consolidator Imperial founded in 2019, now twenty-one branches across eight states, with Liberty Mutual capital added in 2024 to keep buying.
The zero-lower-bound on its EBITDA range means Imperial's platforms shop in exactly the searcher-sized market, unusual even among lower-middle-market firms. Meeting them, the facts to know are the 1989 Toronto founding, the recession-resistant services thesis, the entrepreneur-partnership requirement, and the tuck-in engine's published pace.
What It Buys
Toronto, ON. The Toronto growth firm that founded Certus in 2019 to consolidate US pest control: twenty-one branches across eight states so far, with Liberty Mutual capital added in 2024 to keep acquiring.
Selling to them one day, or watching them as the other bidder? Track them in the Contact Book so the relationship has a next-touch date.
Confirmed Deals
1 deal traced to announcements by Imperial Capital, 2025, newest first. Firms that announce every deal show a fuller run here than firms that report acquisitions as quarterly counts, so read this as the evidence that clears the bar rather than as the firm's whole record.
Nothing newer has cleared the bar in 15 months, against a registry whose newest confirmed deal is August 6, 2026. A gap past 12 months can mean the firm has slowed, or that it has stopped announcing; treat it as a prompt to check its own newsroom before assuming either.
- Evolve Pest Control (into Certus) · May 8, 2025
A Las Vegas-area operator covering corners of three states, strengthening Certus in Nevada.