ACF Investment Bank, Behind Slew Of Production Company M&A, Sold To Merchant Bank The Forest Road Company

ACF Investment Bank, which helped with the sale of Pilgrim Studios to Lionsgate and Charlie Brooker’s Broke & Bones to Netflix, has a new majority owner.

Merchant bank The Forest Road Company has acquired a majority stake in the company, which was founded by Thomas Dey and Richard Gray in 2010. It adds a media and entertainment arm to Forest Road’s existing advisory business.

ACF, which has offices in the U.S. and UK, was also behind the recent sale of The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit IP to Embracer Group and the sale of Brent Montgomery’s Leftfield to ITV.

It will continue operating under the ACF brand with CEO Dey continue to run the business. Jeremy Tarica, Forest Road Securities CEO, will work with ACF to integrate it into the broader business.

Tarica said, “We are thrilled to welcome ACF to the Forest Road family, with their impressive track record of selling premium IP and facilitating iconic transactions across the globe in the content production arena. We are confident that, together, we can unlock incredible opportunities for growth within our portfolio, augmenting the capabilities of our respective businesses.”

“In a rapidly evolving media environment we need to match our client and market needs and evolve ourselves. This is a tremendously exciting next step in growing ACF’s capability by joining the Forest Road family. By uniting with this incredibly ambitious and well-connected team we are accelerating the fire power of the service offering. The media landscape is growing more sophisticated, and our clients’ needs are growing. With this transaction I am confident we can raise the standards further and deliver an even better-quality client solution,” added Dey.