Equiteq, a global investment bank specializing in sell-side M&A for consulting and technology services firms, turned to Grata to compete on precision in one of finance's most fragmented markets. By replacing broad outreach with tightly targeted campaigns across seven offices on four continents, Equiteq has made data quality and global coverage the foundation of its growth strategy.
Equiteq is an investment bank focused on sell-side M&A, committed to helping founder-owned businesses grow their value, sell their companies, and raise private equity investment. Since its founding more than 20 years ago, Equiteq has centered on people, filling a gap in the market as advisors who truly understand people-led businesses. Since then, Equiteq has grown into a global operation with seven offices across North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, India, Singapore, and Australia, completing between 20 and 30 deals each year.
Equiteq specializes in advising consulting and technology service firms, including engineering services firms, cyber-service businesses, and marketing information companies. With more than 250 completed deals and 70+ employees, Equiteq sets itself apart through deep sector expertise in a fragmented, fast-moving market.
Associate Director Phil Baxter has been with Equiteq since 2008, serving as the firm's internal change consultant. His work spans technology transformation, CRM implementation, marketing operations, and an ongoing AI initiative.
Unlike traditional investment banks that prioritize slow-and-steady relationship-building, Equiteq has always been led by a growth mindset. Several years ago, the firm invested in ZoomInfo to support an ambitious revenue growth target. This was enough to get the origination function up and running, but the Equiteq team ultimately concluded it was a poor fit. ZoomInfo’s data couldn’t keep up with real-time market changes needed in M&A, and identifying actual decision makers among hundreds of contacts per company proved nearly impossible.
Equiteq evaluated alternatives and chose Grata based on three criteria:
“A lot of the solutions we looked at were either US-centric or European-focused,” Baxter said. “Grata covers the geographical base much better than other platforms.”
Grata's keyword-based search and website synthesis also matched Equiteq’s market intelligence philosophy: identify emerging niches before M&A activity peaks, then build relationships early.
"Our big reason for selecting Grata was that we could really get precise,” Baxter said. “We can research the market, find the M&A drivers, and get to the right decision makers. Because we’re extreme sector specialists, being able to dive down into that super fragmented market with a lot more precision is a big value driver.”
With Grata in place, Equiteq moved from broad outreach to highly targeted campaigns built around the micro-niches where M&A activity is trending. Leveraging Grata’s search and enrichment capabilities enables the team to build tight, verified lists to address a precise audience.
"We're not sending a tech services report to 10,000 tech services companies,” Baxter illustrated. “We're sending a health tech report to 100 health tech companies, of which 99 of them have already been confirmed to be interested in that, as opposed to a spray-and-pray solution that would actually actively damage us."
Grata's high-quality data helps firms cut through the noise of increasingly crowded inboxes. According to Baxter, the antidote is twofold: "Good data quality: the basics, as in, you've got the right email address and the job title and the first name. But it's also about relevance." By using Grata to zero in on the right audience with the right message, Equiteq found they were getting not just better open rates, but better “quality of email health.”
That data precision extends to onboarding new hires. When Equiteq brought in a senior hire with deep healthcare technology experience, the team used Grata to get them up to speed quickly. “In addition to their relationships and leads, we use Grata during onboarding to surround new hires with data and find them additional companies and leads they've never heard of,” Baxter said.
For Equiteq, Grata has become more than a data tool — it's a crucial infrastructure for a firm that competes on precision in one of the most fragmented markets in finance. Baxter put it simply: “If we weren't using Grata, we wouldn't be growing as fast. We've been happy with what we found, and the data that we've used from Grata has made a material difference to us in our ability to grow the business.”
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