Paul L. Schaye
Paul L. Schaye is the founding partner of Chestnut Hill Partners, a mergers and acquisitions investment bank, an expert in the mid-and-top-tier private equity sector, and an experienced Board member.
Paul offers a no-nonsense understanding of the M&A marketplace, and is recognized for bringing strong leadership, analytic listening, careful analysis, and thoughtful tactical direction to strategic acquisitions. He is consultative in his approach, reflecting his early life experience in both corporate enterprise and as a management consultant.
In a variety of positions prior to founding Chestnut Hill Partners, Paul has been known for bringing a keen focus on performance enhancements through operational analysis, and for consistently demonstrating a natural ability to enhance performance, people, and systems with strong consultative technique and creative thinking during his 30 year career in investment banking and consulting. In his role as a strategic adviser, Paul has guided Boards and management in managing life-changing financial events for buyers and sellers by bringing to bear the diligence, discipline and creativity he has developed over a career of transaction implementation and leadership. Paul is highly regarded as a principal confidant, mentor and counselor to both sellers and buyers in the mid-tier private equity marketplace.
Prior to founding Chestnut Hill Partners, Paul directed new technology implementations and existing practice overhauls in areas of information technology, advanced information integration, and human resource-technology interface for AGS, a NYNEX company. Previous to that, Paul was recruited to ShowTime (a Viacom company), for which he retooled the human resource organization during the tumultuous Warner/Amex/CBS leadership upheavals. Other career experiences that further refined and polished his analytic consulting skills included early career time with the Brookhill Capital, ValuFinder (buy-side investment bank), PepsiCo and A.T. Kearney. Paul refined his business analysis and management skills as a global management consultant for Booz Allen and Hamilton.
Recognizing Mr. Schaye’s unique set of operating capabilities and his ability to connect personally and professionally with senior leadership, Vestar Capital backed the initial formation of Chestnut Hill Partners in 1996. Today, the firm has $5 billion in transactional M&A experience including leading individual transactions with enterprise values in excess of $500 million.
Paul has been recognized as the M&A Pro of the Year by Mergers and Acquisitions Journal and is frequently featured in leading publications including the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg Magazine.
Mr. Schaye served 5 years as a Director of the Philadelphia Financial, is a member of the Board of Advisors for the Thrive Ride – a not-for-profit Columbia Presbyterian Charity Event, sits on the Cancer Advisory Council at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and is a regular contributor to the financial media.
Paul received his B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and continued through as a PhD. candidate (all but dissertation) in Organizational Behavior. He is an avid distance athlete, in both running and cycling. He has participated in the Mt. Washington cycle climb; the Paris-Breast-Paris 750 mile cycling event; two NYC Marathons; and multiple ½ Ironman & Olympic Triathlon competitions.