News / Insights

CDI Global Annual General Meeting brings people together

CDI Global’s AGM is so important to the network because we have a lot of groups of investment banking firms, boutique investment banking firms that associate with each other in some kind of global organization but have never connected. These companies tend to be loose federations and despite being in the same region, members of these firms haven’t met each other. This makes our AGM uniquely positioned to help our members connect and talk about current and future deals and plans. These networks provide members a kind of an umbrella organization to demonstrate that they can reach globally to participate or to advise a client in a buy-side or sell-side mandate.

That's very different from CDI Global which has distributed ownership, we operate as an integrated single firm under one brand for cross-border middle market transactions. And for that to work effectively, our partners need to know each other personally. Our Annual General Meeting not only is a vehicle for exchanging ideas for new business development, it helps connect people and helps with client services. Our AGM is also a vehicle for networking amongst our member firms and for building personal relationships and rapport with other members, which facilitates our working together in pursuing new business as well as serving clients on cross border mandates.

To end this year's event, our founder, Bo Hjelt gave a heartfelt talk about how important in his life the firm has been, not only when he was an active owner and founder of the firm, but for the past few decades when he's been essentially of counsel to the firm. He had many compliments and little anecdotes from his experience. He recognized some of our leaders, the current leadership of the firm, as well as prior leaders of the firm who were in attendance at the gala dinner, celebrating our 50th anniversary. And at the conclusion of his remarks we gave Bo a plaque which recognized him as a business leader, an entrepreneur, and most importantly as a philanthropist who has endowed a number of philanthropic organizations.

We want to thank everyone who participated and made this year’s event even more special because we are celebrating 50 years.