Financing the Arsenal of Democracy Series: The Equity Landscape

As part of BENS's Financing the Arsenal of Democracy panel series, we are convening leaders from finance, industry, and national security to move beyond abstract concepts and get into the mechanics of how capital actually flows into national security priorities with real-world practitioners.

Building on our first discussion in the series focused on growth credit for small business with Elros Capital, we are pleased to invite you to the second session: the Equity Landscape.

Agenda

In this session, we’re bringing together a panel of experts to discuss:

• how different equity classes view the defense market
• how strategic acquirers are evaluating the current M&A landscape
• what is drawing family offices and private wealth into the defense space
• what it will take — beyond cheaper capital alone — for critical defense businesses to not just get funded, but to compete and scale.

Featured Panel

This session takes a deep dive beyond early-stage venture, bringing together three distinct perspectives from across the private capital ecosystem — a defense industry growth executive, one of the nation's leading A&D investment bankers, and a veteran family office investor.

Moderator: Frank Finelli, BENS Board Director; Senior Advisor, The Carlyle Group;

• Church Hutton, Chief Growth Officer, AeroVironment (AV) 

• Eric Reeves, BENS Member; Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Prospect Park LLC

• John Song, Managing Director & Co-Head, Defense & Government Investment Banking, Baird 

Our Financing the Arsenal of Democracy series will feature different panels to examine commercial and private lenders, government lending and financing tools, and hybrid capital structures — building toward a complete picture of how the defense industrial base gets financed.

We hope you can join us for the Equity Landscape session, which promises to be a timely and substantive conversation. In-person guests are invited to stay for networking following the event.

Organizer:
Alex Volp
avolp@bens.org

Cost: Free