Positive & Team-Oriented

Accountable

Committed

Entrepreneurial

Relationship-Focused

Super-Responsive & Great Communicators

• Smile and focus on opportunities
• Put the team in front of yourself

• Do what you say you will do (when you said you would do it)
• Hold your colleagues to the same standard

• Be tenacious professionally and personally
• Relentlessly focus on the success of colleagues and the firm

• Spend the firm’s money like it’s your own
• Be flexible, avoid bureaucracy
• Promote change that moves us forward; don’t create roadblocks
• Strive for better, faster, more efficient ways to serve clients and your team

• Take an active interest in others
• Celebrate, learn from, and leverage peoples’ differences
• Be friendly
• Exhibit grace and humility
• Be a consummate business developer / brand ambassador (regardless of role)
• Be a great mentor or mentee

• Demonstrate bias for action
• Respond right NOW (or let people know when to expect a response)
• Give status updates before you’re asked
• Ask thoughtful questions to understand needs
• Always set expectations you can meet (and hopefully exceed)

1997

We establish our Investment Banking group, offering advice on mergers and acquisitions, private capital raising, and other services for business owners, private equity portfolio companies, and corporate divisions.

1998

Our Disputes, Compliance, & Investigations group launches, delivering a variety of services, including expert testimony, litigation consulting, investigations, compliance, and special assignments.

2000

We expand our physical presence with an office in downtown Cleveland.

2001

Our Chicago office opens. The office has become the largest at the firm in terms of both personnel and revenue.

2004

We open our Tysons Corner office in Virginia, servicing the Washington, DC, metropolitan region

2007

Our East Coast footprint grows with the opening of our New York office. Also during the year, we relocate our corporate headquarters to Chicago.

2011

We expand to the West Coast with our new Los Angeles location.

2012

Our growth continues as we complete our first major acquisition with the purchase of valuation and investment banking firm Howard Frazier Barker Elliott (HFBE). Through this transaction, we establish our Dallas and Houston offices, providing a solid foundation in Texas. Separately, we open offices in Atlanta and Washington, DC, strengthening our East Coast base.

2014

With the growth of our Disputes, Compliance, & Investigations practice, we open our Baltimore office – our third in the Mid-Atlantic region – and expand our DC office. We also establish a Denver office to better serve clients in the Mountain states.

2016

In another year of big moves, we celebrate our 25th anniversary. We complete our acquisition of Natoma Partners, fortifying our Disputes, Compliance, & Investigations services. We also open offices in Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, MI, and Irvine, CA.

2017

We launch our new brand – Stout – leveraging existing brand equity and expertise across our core services. We also acquire FMV Opinions, further expanding our Valuation Advisory group. In addition, we strengthen our global reach, opening a new office in Lausanne, Switzerland.

2018

Our global footprint expands to Asia, as we establish new offices in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, which help broaden our transaction coverage in these regions.

2019

We broaden our presence and transaction coverage in Europe, with new offices in Berlin and Milan. We also expand on the West Coast by opening an office in San Francisco. In addition, we launch several new practice areas. 

2020

We establish a new office in London, bolstering our transaction coverage in the Nordic and Western European markets. 

2021

Stout celebrates 30 years. We partner with Audax Private Equity, acquire Secura Risk Management, launch our IT Due Diligence practice, and open a Miami office.