Acquicon 2026 Will Gather up to 500 Business Owners, Investors, and M&A Professionals in Sandy, Utah Next Week

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

✅ Acquicon 2026 will bring an expected 400–500 business owners, investors, capital providers, and M&A professionals to Sandy, Utah next week for a three-day event focused on acquisitions, exits, enterprise value, and capital strategy.

✅ Roughly half of attendees are expected to be seasoned business operators, with another 35%–40% representing active capital and investment interests, creating (in the process) a concentrated gathering of buyers, sellers, investors, and advisers within the lower-middle market.

✅ Featured participants include Scott Danner, Paul Burgon, and Bill Kirth, execs whose combined experience spans building and selling businesses, private equity, acquisitions, corporate exits, restructuring, and capital formation.

SANDY, Utah — 14 October 2026 — Hundreds of business owners, investors, capital providers, and mergers-and-acquisitions professionals are expected to converge on Sandy, Utah next week for Acquicon 2026, a three-day conference focused on
🔷  Building enterprise value,
🔷  Buying and selling businesses,
🔷  Accessing capital, and
🔷  Converting privately held business ownership into long-term wealth.

The application-only conference runs 19–21 October 2026, with its primary sessions taking place at the Karen Gail Miller Conference Center in Sandy.

Organizers say they expect approximately 400–500 attendees, including
🟥  Established business owners,
🟥  Private-equity investors,
🟥  Family-office owners and executives,
🟥  Lenders,
🟥  Acquisition entrepreneurs, and
🟥  M&A advisers.

Founded in 2022, Acquicon has evolved from an acquisition-focused conference into the flagship national gathering of the broader Acquisition Headquarters ecosystem created by founder Nathan Byrd.

One of the things I quite like about Aquicon is that rather than concentrating on startups or venture-backed companies, the conference is aimed principally at established privately held businesses and the investors and advisers surrounding them.

Specifically, the conference is described as targeting an "operator audience" of seasoned entrepreneurs running companies generating approximately $2 million to $75 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (aka, EBITDA).

About half of the anticipated attendees are expected to be seasoned operators, while roughly 35%–40% are expected to represent active capital and investment interests, according to conference organizers.

I feel that such an audience makes Acquicon particularly relevant to the lower-middle-market economy, where business ownership, succession, acquisitions, financing, and eventual exits frequently intersect.

“We're working to shift business culture toward stronger relationships, durable enterprise value and long-term thinking about ownership, capital and wealth,” Byrd said.

The event has been structured around three related themes:
⚫️ Building relationships,
⚫️ Building the underlying business asset, and
⚫️ Ultimately leveraging that asset to create
▪️ Liquidity,
▪️ Wealth, and
▪️ Greater financial optionality.

Its three-day agenda includes discussions and workshops involving
🟣 Enterprise value,
🟣 Acquisition strategies,
🟣 Capital formation and allocation,
🟣 Transaction readiness,
🟣 Business exits,
🟣 Advanced tax strategies,
🟣 Investing,
🟣 Fund structures, and
🟣 Wealth preservation.

Event programming also includes deal-oriented conversations intended to connect qualified investors and capital providers with acquisition and investment opportunities.

Highlighted Panelists / Speakers

One of the challenges when attending an event like Acquicon is knowing what panel discussion to attend or speaker presentations to focus on.

For me, among the scheduled participants I'm interested in hearing from is Scott Danner, Chief Growth Officer of Stamford, Connecticut-based Steward Partners, a firm with over $57 billion in client assets.

Danner founded Freedom Street Partners in mid-2016 and grew the wealth-management company to more than 40 advisers operating across seven states managing ~$3.5 billion in assets before leading its 2023 merger with Steward Partners.

Today, he plays a central role in the Steward's M&A and strategic-growth activities and provides a real-world case study in building and ultimately transitioning enterprise value.

For context, during the third quarter alone, Steward said five of six newly affiliated advisory teams joined through M&A transactions, with Danner emphasizing the different liquidity, succession, growth, and ownership paths available to successful business founders.

Another featured participant at Acquicon 2026 is Paul Burgon, a Utah-based veteran investment and M&A executive whose career spans more than 30 years across acquisitions, private equity, venture capital, strategic investments, and corporate exits.

Burgon, now a partner with KittyHawk Frontier, has invested in and helped create more than $3 billion in exits across nearly 100 companies. His background also includes extensive work at Danaher, where he helped develop the company's acquisition system and corporate venture-capital activities.

I think Burgon's perspective gives Acquicon participants access to the other side of the transaction table, namely how sophisticated buyers and investors
🟠 Evaluate businesses,
🟠 Deploy capital,
🟠 Execute acquisitions, and (ultimately)
🟠 Create exits.

Utah investor Bill Kirth brings yet another perspective.

A long-time friend and business colleague, Kirth is a managing partner with Rectify Partners and an active investor, someone with over 35 years of experience involving traditional banking, asset-based lending, private equity, entrepreneurship, corporate finance, and turnarounds.

He also manages his own private-equity fund and has owned and sold several businesses during his career.

For Utah owners and investors, these three Acquicon speakers/panel members highlight what I believe may be the most compelling element of Acquicon 2026:
🔴  Not simply learning how businesses are bought and sold,
🔴  But examining what
🔺 Sophisticated operators,
🔺 Buyers,
🔺 Investors,
🔺 Lenders, and
🔺 Advisers do
before a transaction occurs to make the underlying company more valuable.

Acquicon 2026 begins with a VIP Reception on Monday, 19 October 2026, followed by two full days of conference programming on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I hope to see you there.

Publisher's Note

Utah Money Watch reports and analyzes companies, transactions, securities, valuations and financial outcomes for informational and journalistic purposes. Nothing published by Utah Money Watch is intended as individualized investment advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security.

As such, this writeup was originally published and distributed to our Subscribers at approximately 11:40am MT on Wednesday, 14 October 2026.

However, if this report/article came to your attention sometime after this date/time and you'd like to change that, then (to become a Free Subscriber), please 

1. Click on a "Subscribe" button on any Utah Money Watch webpage (visit www.UtahMoneyWatch.com),
2. Enter your name in the proper field in the popup window that appears on-screen, and
3. Enter your preferred email address in the proper field too.

That's it. You've now joined the ranks of our Free Subscribers.

So, thanks.

The Utah Money Watch Team