Deal Spotlight – Hahn Loeser & Parks: Niche Manufacturer Sells to PE, Founder Exits and Growth Capital in Ohio

Most editions of this series are built around a sector or a corridor. This one is built around a place. Hahn Loeser & Parks has recently acted for three Ohio businesses with almost nothing in common commercially — aerospace filtration, crisis communications and regenerative biomaterials — but which between them cover the full arc of a privately held company's life: a manufacturer founded in 1927 selling into a private equity-backed platform, a consultancy built up over three decades passing to a strategic buyer, and a young company raising the capital to reach its first regulatory milestone.

Falls Filtration Technologies sold to Velocity One
Mergers & Acquisitions — announced 24 March 2026
Hahn Loeser acted for Falls Filtration Technologies, Inc. on its sale to Velocity One, an aerospace and defence platform backed by Charlesbank Capital Partners. Falls Filtration, headquartered in Stow, Ohio, and its predecessors have been manufacturing air, oil, air/oil separation and hydraulic filtration products since 1927. Its filters are used in aircraft, ground vehicles, heavy equipment, marine applications, power generation and rail.

For the buyer, the attraction is the sole-source position: Falls Filtration holds proprietary applications in markets where qualification is slow, and switching is rare, which is a form of moat that shows up clearly in diligence and rather less clearly on a balance sheet. Velocity One has been assembling a portfolio of specialist aerospace and defence component businesses, and the Falls Filtration acquisition followed its addition of Kaney Aerospace the month before, alongside earlier additions in energetic devices, inertial navigation and aircraft power electronics.

A long-time Ohio manufacturer selling into a fund-backed consolidation platform is a familiar shape in the American mid-market at present, and it is the kind of transaction where the seller's counsel carries most of the weight: the buyer is doing this repeatedly and the seller, usually, once.

Christopher Blake, Partner and Co-Chair, led the team at Hahn Loeser alongside Gregory M. Nolfi, Senior Counsel.

Hennes Communications sold to AKCG – Public Relations Counselors
Mergers & Acquisitions — announced 12 May 2026
Hahn Loeser advised Hennes Communications, the Cleveland crisis management and crisis communications consultancy, on its sale to AKCG – Public Relations Counselors. Founded in 1989, Hennes advises organisations on pre-crisis preparation, media training and litigation communications support. It continues to operate as a division of AKCG rather than being absorbed into it.

AKCG has been in practice since 1982, is based in Glassboro, New Jersey with an office in Washington DC, and works with independent schools, higher education, senior living and healthcare clients. The combination gives Hennes national reach it could not have built alone, and gives AKCG a crisis capability it did not previously hold.

Founder Bruce Hennes has been unusually candid about the transaction in the firm's own account of it, acknowledging that by the standards of the M&A market this was a small deal at a firm of only a few people, while describing what it meant to hand on something built from nothing across three decades. Hahn Loeser's M&A team completed thirty-nine transactions worth over $900 million in 2025; the contrast is instructive, and to the firm's credit.

Jonathan C. Wolnik led for Hahn Loeser, working with Ann E. Knuth.

Auxilium Health closes oversubscribed US$3.4 million seed round
Corporate Transactions — announced 23 July 2026
Hahn Loeser advised Auxilium Health on an oversubscribed US$3.4 million Series Seed Preferred Stock round, backed by a mix of returning and new regional and strategic investors and more than double the company's previous raise. The proceeds take its lead product, Aer, towards FDA clearance and first-in-human use.

Auxilium develops bioaerogels that resist bacterial colonisation while encouraging tissue regeneration, with applications across wound repair, bone regeneration and localised delivery. Surgeons describe the underlying problem as the race for the surface — the contest between healing cells and bacteria to colonise an implanted material first. Conventional biomaterials try to win that race by killing bacteria once they arrive; Auxilium's approach is structural, mimicking the body's own extracellular matrix and doing without antibiotics.

The company is based at the Cleveland Clinic's Global Innovation Center, has support from the National Science Foundation, the Ohio Department of Development and the Polymer Industry Cluster, and has doubled its team over the past year. Its founder and chief executive is Isaiah Kaiser, PhD.

James M. Gianfagna led for Hahn Loeser, working with Paige Evans.

Further reading:

• Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP — firm profile on alliottglobal.com
• More from the Alliott Global Alliance Deal Spotlight series

About Deal Spotlight:

Deal Spotlight is a series from Alliott Global Alliance (AGA) highlighting notable transactions and matters handled by AGA representative firms around the world. Previous editions have featured DNA Vietnam's offshore wind and water infrastructure M&A in Vietnam, Wildeboer Dellelce: Cross-Border M&A and Capital Markets from Canada, Deutsch Miller's Corporate and M&A Deals in Australia's Technology and Consumer Sectors, Simont Braun's advice on the sale of MindCapture in Belgium, and Madrona Advogados acting as deal counsel on a R$16.1m real estate securitisation (CRI) for Valora.

About Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP:

Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP is a full-service law firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, with further offices including Columbus, Chicago, San Diego, Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota and Orlando. The firm advises privately held and public companies across corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, business law, construction, litigation, labor and employment, creditor’s rights, estates and trusts and intellectual property, with a long-standing focus on closely held and family-owned businesses. Hahn Loeser has been Alliott Global Alliance's law firm representative in Ohio since 2011. Read more.

Talk to the team
Corporate Transactions and International — Christopher Blake, Partner and Co-Chair.
Mergers & Acquisitions — Jonathan C. Wolnik, Partner.
Corporate Transactions — James M. Gianfagna, Partner.