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Tarrus Richardson was 17 when he clipped a newspaper article about Reginald Lewis, who had just completed the largest overseas leveraged buyout in history. Lewis had acquired a global food company with operations in 31 countries, and the deal ran to more than a billion dollars. Richardson looked at the article, told his mother it looked like a good job and decided that he wanted to be in those rooms.
That single moment set the direction for a career that ran from Citibank's Salomon Brothers merger group through JLL Partners, a private equity firm with more than $2 billion in assets under management, on to ICV Partners, a $440 million minority-owned private equity firm he co-founded in 1998, and eventually to IMB Partners, which he launched in 2010 with a specific thesis: that the lower middle market, meaning essential businesses in utilities, infrastructure and government contracting, was both underserved by institutional capital and full of durable, compounding value. With more than $500 million deployed across 20-plus acquisitions since then, here is what Richardson has built.
The Pennsylvania powerhouse behind high-voltage grid work
Carr & Duff is an electrical construction firm based in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, with decades of regional expertise serving utilities, transit authorities and industrial clients. Its work spans high-voltage substation construction, overhead and underground line installation and emergency storm restoration — the kind of essential, unglamorous infrastructure work that keeps power moving across the Mid-Atlantic grid. IMB acquired Carr & Duff in 2022, adding one of the region's most experienced electrical contractors to a portfolio already built around companies that serve the backbone of American infrastructure.
A direct line into US military commissaries worldwide
Alder Foods is a Massachusetts-based grocery distributor with a narrow but strategically valuable focus: supplying national-brand products to US military commissaries and exchanges around the world, serving active-duty service members and their families. Richardson acquired the company in 2016. Military commissary supply is a specialized channel with high barriers to entry, long-term government-linked contracts and predictable demand. That combination is exactly the kind of position IMB's acquisition model is designed around.
Federal cybersecurity from Washington's contracting corridor
Ashburn Consulting is a Virginia-based firm operating at the intersection of network engineering and cybersecurity, primarily serving federal and local government agencies as well as educational institutions and commercial clients. The company is known for its work in firewall migration and secure network design. Richardson brought Ashburn into the IMB portfolio in 2020, planting IMB directly inside Washington's government contracting ecosystem at a time when federal IT security spending was accelerating rapidly.
The utility infrastructure fixer behind large-scale pipeline jobs
LaFata Contract Services is a Pennsylvania-based project management and engineering firm that serves electric and gas utilities on large-scale infrastructure jobs. It functions as an operational partner for major utilities, handling projects that require technical expertise and tight regulatory compliance. IMB acquired LaFata in 2018, and Richardson has focused on expanding its capacity to compete for larger contracts without sacrificing the specialist service quality that built its early reputation.
Protecting pipelines and storage tanks across the American West
Farwest Corrosion Control is a California-based engineering and products company specializing in cathodic protection, the process of preventing metal corrosion in pipelines, storage tanks and marine structures. Corrosion costs the US economy more than $270 billion annually. Farwest provides both the technical engineering expertise and the hardware required to address it. Richardson acquired Farwest in 2022 as part of a deliberate push into the essential but overlooked parts of American energy and water infrastructure, where specialized knowledge and long-term contracts create lasting competitive moats.
Modernizing federal agencies one legacy system at a time
eTelligent Group, known as eTel, is a New Jersey-based provider of emerging technologies and program management services to the US federal government, with clients that include major departments such as the IRS. IMB acquired eTel in 2023. The company helps government agencies retire outdated systems and implement data-driven solutions, positioning it at the center of a sustained wave of federal digital transformation spending. The acquisition pushed IMB's government contracting reach into higher-margin technology consulting work.
The IT staffing platform that anchored a decade of growth
e&e IT Consulting Services is a Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania-based firm providing IT staffing and consulting to government and commercial clients. Acquired in 2014, it was IMB's first platform investment in the technology services sector and has been a consistent performer for more than a decade. In 2025, IMB successfully closed out its 2014 investment vehicle tied to e&e and created a continuation vehicle, reflecting both the firm's long-term orientation and its sustained confidence in the platform's ability to keep compounding.
