IN MEMORIAM

Our Founder

Sumner Kaufman

1934-2025

We are saddened by the loss of our founder, leader, colleague, and friend, Sumner who recently passed away due to complications from cancer. And we also celebrate everything he did during his remarkable, seven-decade career in investment banking.

A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, Sumner in his own words initially “took a bite out of law school, but didn’t like the taste.”  Fortunately for all who later had the pleasure to work with him, Sumner set out for Wall Street in the late 50’s and landed his first job updating stock prices on the chalk board for the trading desk at Kidder, Peabody & Co.  Ambitious to move up to corporate finance, he did a stint at Ira, Haupt & Co. before joining White, Weld & Company, Inc. to manage its Boston office’s Corporate Finance Department.  Sumner spent nearly twenty years at White Weld and became the firm’s youngest member ever elected to Partner.  Along the way, he advised, took public, and/or otherwise financed a variety of clients ranging from publicly-traded, Fortune-1000 companies to early-stage technology ventures, including many of the up and comers of the day such as then tech darling Wang Laboratories, that would go on to establish leadership positions in their industries for years or decades to follow.

In 1978, following several years of bear market conditions severing startup companies’ access to capital, Sumner left White, Weld to found Kaufman & Company, which established the very business we still practice today: providing capital raising and merger & acquisition advisory services to emerging growth and middle market companies throughout North America.  Success came early and definitively: Kaufman & Company was proud to count as early clients industry leaders and innovators such as CDM Smith, Bluebird Inc., The Boston Phoenix, West Lynn Creamery, Kurzweil Technologies, and many others that all represent foundational experience in sectors that we still serve today.  Along the way, Sumner cemented his reputation as the consummate deal maker; he had an uncanny ability to bring disparate parties together through innovative deal structuring, masterful negotiation, and persistence.  He was a creative problem solver by nature, and successfully orchestrating deals was a source of such personal fulfillment that he never retired.

Importantly, Sumner also created the culture that is deeply rooted in our firm: he always measured the value of a client relationship over years if not decades, which meant identifying best-in-class operators and advising them on what was optimal for them in the long run vs. what might benefit our firm in the short run; to this day we still value length over number of client relationships.  And he led us all by example with respect to integrity, perseverance, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and excellence with humility…all packaged with his characteristic sense of humor.

We will miss our dear friend and partner, but we will carry on his traditions.