In 2003 Tom Blaige founded Blaige & Co., an international investment banking firm dedicated exclusively to the plastics industry. He has 22-plus years of transaction experience, having completed more than 100 deals and visited 135 plastics operations in all parts of the world. Blaige & Co.'s proprietary research department tracks and analyzes more than 400 plastics industry merger and acquisition transactions annually on a worldwide basis.
Blaige's transactions experience includes: strategic combinations with large global consolidators; the sale, acquisition and recapitalization of family-owned companies and corporate divisions; corporate divestiture and spin-off transactions; and private-equity portfolio divestitures, and platform and add-on acquisitions. Prior to founding his Chicago-based company, Blaige was managing director for two generalist investment banks and a middle-market M&A unit of a Wall Street investment bank. He also worked as a private-equity investor with Prudential Capital Group, where he specialized in management buyouts and build-ups of privately held businesses and corporate divisions.
Blaige is a member of the Society of Plastics Industry Inc., the Institute of Packaging Professionals and the Society of Plastics Engineers. He is also a member of the Association for Corporate Growth and the Turnaround Management Association. He earned a master of management degree, with distinction, from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and a bachelor of business administration degree from Loyola University of Chicago. He is certified as an NASD Inc. Series 24 securities principal, and a Series 7 and 63 registered representative.