Paul J. Donnelly
Managing Partner
Paul Donnelly is a co-founder of Coil Partners having spent his career as an investment banking professional and principal investor. Paul has a successful track record of working with emerging growth and middle-market companies to enhance shareholder value through various corporate finance and M&A initiatives.
He has served as a financial advisor on numerous successful engagements representing over $3.85 billion in transaction value for clients such as: Travis Mathew, Camping World, Fruit Fillings, Trojan Battery Corporation, Reliant Account Management, Monk Development, Enerliance, Lead Tracking Solutions, GeoMicro, Interush, Benihana, TS Restaurants (Dukes and Hula Grill), Hu Hot, Earthbar, Trend Offset, eWork, Proxim Wireless, Accurate Metal Fabricators, Yard House, Radius Medical, Islands Restaurants, Intercoastal Manufacturing Company, DynTek, Iteris, Rand Technology, Triton Network Systems, Pro-Log, and Grand Prix Association of Long Beach.
Prior to founding Coil Partners (previously Optivest IB), Paul was a Managing Director with the Los Angeles-based investment banking firm B. Riley & Co. He began his career with L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin and later joined L.H. Friend & Company as a Managing Director and continued post-merger with B. Riley & Company. Paul has also been active on the principal side of equity and debt investing with venture capital firms Enterprise Management Company, Pacific Venture Finance and Ally Capital.
Paul received his B.S. in Finance and Business Administration from San Diego State University and holds FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 licenses.
Sam Donnelly
Principal
Sam Donnelly is a Principal at Coil Partners, where he performs sellside and buyside M&A advisory, debt and equity financings, and strategic assessments for middle-market companies. Prior to joining Coil Partners, Sam was a Sr. Associate at Coral Tree Partners, where he focused on all phases of the investment process and portfolio company management for companies across the media, entertainment, communications, and related business services sectors. Previously, Sam worked in the Business Services group at Houlihan Lokey, providing sellside and buyside M&A advisory to companies in the engineering and industrial services, communications, and marketing services sectors.
Sam’s combined investment banking and private equity experience along with his data analytics expertise provides Coil clients value-added services that help them better understand how to access and convert their data into performance enhancement. Sam is currently a member of the leadership team for a lifestyle apparel brand formed by three industry leaders/founders of Travis Mathew and Cuater.
Sam received his B.S. in Finance and M.S. in Business Analytics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
Stevan Grubic, ASA
Principal
Stevan Grubic has over 20 years of middle-market investment banking experience providing financial and strategic analysis for a broad range of financial advisory mandates, including buy and sell side M&A, private placements, recapitalizations, distressed situations and business valuations/fairness opinions. He has participated in or directly managed over $400 million in transactional and sourced capital and completed over 100 business valuations and related strategic analyses representing well over $1.0 billion in asset values. Stevan’s most recent transactions include M&A, corporate finance and/or valuations for clients such as: Fruit Fillings, Crown Components, Reliant Account Management, Enerliance, Interush, FEX DMS, TS Restaurants, CVE Technology and Earthbar.
Additionally, as an accredited senior appraiser with the American Society of Appraisers (ASA), Stevan is an expert in all aspects of business valuations, including fairness opinions, fair value accounting treatments, option and warrant pricing and intangible assets and other intellectual property.
Prior to joining Coil Partners (previously Optivest IB), Steve was with the regional accounting firm of SingerLewak. Previously Stevan was a Senior Vice President with the Los Angeles-based investment banking firm of B. Riley & Co., a leading, full-service securities broker-dealer and investment bank. Stevan was also formerly with the investment banking firm of L.H. Friend & Company.
Stevan received his B.S in Finance and Business Economics from the University of Southern California.
Shannon Kavlich
Operations
Shannon Kavlich oversees all operations functions within the firm and brings over 10 years of marketing and administration experience to the Coil Partners team. Prior to joining Coil Partners, Shannon worked for Optivest Wealth Management for seven years as the Director of Client Services. Originally from Southern California, Shannon earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies and Art History from Westmont College, Santa Barbara.