Calder Capital
At a Glance
The rare bank a searcher can hire rather than merely bid against, and the published scoreboard says they close what they start.
Our pick for Best Published Track Record in 2026.
- Pricing
- Custom Pricing, Buy-side engagements are a published monthly work fee plus a success fee at close: $5,000 a month on the silver program and $7,500 on gold. The work fees are fully credited against the success fee, the fee is halved after an LOI on gold, and the engagement moves to month-to-month after six months. The firm states there are no large fees up front, no milestone fees and no breakup fees, and describes the success fee as a modified Lehman scale quoted on request. Sell-side fees unpublished.
- Best For
- Searchers who want a bank that will work THEIR side of the table, from a firm transparent enough to publish its own deal counts
- Roadmap Stages
- 4. Source & Screen Deals
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Publishes exact closing counts every quarter, which almost no advisor does
- A real buy-side practice, so a searcher can be the client rather than the counterparty
- The sister brand works exactly the main-street sizes searchers hunt
- It names what it does NOT charge as clearly as what it does, and puts a number on the larger program's guarantee rather than promising effort
Cons
- Buy-side work fees are real money before any deal exists: $30,000 to $45,000 over the first six months
- Midwest-rooted network, though the practice claims national reach
- Fast growth strains any service firm's per-client attention
- The guarantee carries the firm's own caveat that it depends on there being enough pursuable targets in the criteria you set, which is the real term in it
What Searchers Say
The transparency habit is the reputation: quarterly closing tallies on its own blog, with Axial rankings to match.