We know what it’s like to be on your side of the table.

Experienced business-sale guidance, rooted in New Jersey and backed by a global buyer network.

Selling a business is both a financial transaction and a personal transition. Transworld Ascend helps owners prepare, position and sell their companies with clear advice, strict confidentiality and direct senior involvement from valuation through closing.

With offices in Jersey City, Montclair and Iselin, our team serves business owners across north-central New Jersey. We combine firsthand owner and operator experience, long-standing business brokerage expertise and the resources of Transworld Business Advisors to reach qualified buyers while keeping the process personal, accountable and local.

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Meet the advisors behind the practice

Fred Petito and Paul Vento lead the practice. Both bring different but complementary experience to the same goal: helping owners move through a business sale with better preparation, stronger positioning, and fewer surprises.

Fred and Paul handle engagements directly, and the firm’s agents run their own transactions with their support and guidance. Whoever you work with, you have experienced advisors behind the sale.

Fred Petito

President and Lead Advisor

Fred combines a background in law and business ownership with more than 20 years of C-level executive experience and expertise in lower-middle-market M&A and exit-planning. He is a Certified Merger & Acquisition Advisor and a Certified Exit Planning Advisor. He founded Transworld Ascend to provide sellers with direct, experienced guidance from the first valuation conversation through closing. He has led transactions across manufacturing, distribution, professional services, technology, and the skilled trades.

About Fred Petito

Paul Vento

Managing Director and Senior Advisor

Paul brings 15 years of business brokerage experience and the practical perspective of having bought and sold businesses of his own. He has successfully represented transactions across manufacturing, fabrication, professional services, wineries and food-related businesses.

About Paul Vento

Two people reviewing printed plans at an office table

Local knowledge.
Experienced representation.
A disciplined process.

Transworld Ascend represents owners of privately held businesses across north-central New Jersey, with values from $500,000 to $25 million.

We help owners understand how buyers will evaluate their business, what drives value, where a transaction may encounter risk, and what can be improved before the company goes to market. Our work can include valuation analysis, recasting and normalizing earnings, buyer positioning, confidential marketing, preparing a Confidential Information Memorandum, buyer screening, deal structuring, negotiation, and managing due diligence through closing.

The process is tailored to the business and the owner’s priorities, but three principles remain constant.

1. Preparation changes outcomes.

Sellers who understand their own business the way a buyer’s diligence team will see it — before going to market — sell faster, at better prices, with fewer surprises at the closing table. The preparation work we do in the months before a business goes to market is where most of the value gets created.

The business sale process →

2. Confidentiality is non-negotiable.

Employees, customers, competitors, and vendors don’t find out until the seller decides they should. Every buyer signs an NDA before receiving identifying information. Information is released in stages. The seller controls the circle at every step.

Business valuation services →

3. The right buyer matters as much as the right price.

A higher offer from a buyer who can’t close, won’t honor the transition, or isn’t right for the employees and customers the seller spent years serving isn’t a better deal. We build buyer pools that attract qualified, motivated acquirers — and we screen them before they reach you.

Preparing your business for sale →

Part of Transworld Business Advisors

Transworld Ascend operates as part of Transworld Business Advisors, one of the world’s largest business brokerage and M&A advisory networks.

That affiliation provides access to a proprietary buyer database, transaction support resources and an international network, while each Transworld office remains independently owned and operated. Sellers receive the reach and infrastructure of an established organization together with the direct involvement and local knowledge of an owner-operated New Jersey practice.

Focused on the markets we know

Our practice is centered on north-central New Jersey, with offices in Jersey City, Montclair and Iselin, because local market knowledge changes outcomes in ways a national platform alone cannot replicate.

We understand which industries are active in each corridor, which buyers cover the relevant geographies and which transaction-specific issues may apply, including ISRA, bulk-sales notification and professional licensing. That knowledge is reflected throughout the industry and location pages on this site and in the way we prepare every engagement.

Ready to start the conversation?

The first call is free, confidential, and carries no commitment to sell. We’ll tell you honestly what your business is worth and what the market looks like for it.

Request a confidential consultation Or call directly: 201-978-5700