Lincoln International, Inc.

The firm was founded by Rob Barr and Jim Lawson, as well as Ed Hanlon and Eric Malchow, as a boutique investment banking firm, Lincoln Partners, in 1996. Barr and Lawson had worked together since 1981 and they began to work with Hanlon in 1988 and Malchow in 1994. Prior to founding Lincoln Partners, the partners spent most of their time working for Paine Webber, which was acquired by UBS in 2000.

Through the late 1990s, Lincoln Partners grew to an organization of approximately 30 people and became a registered broker dealer.

In January 2006, Lincoln International was formed through the merger of Lincoln Partners and Peters Associates, two middle market investment banks based in the U.S. and Germany, respectively, as well as a team from KPMG joining to form a Paris office. At the time of the merger, Lincoln International had offices in Chicago, Frankfurt, New York and Paris. The two firms had previously worked together through a strategic joint venture established in 2005.

On May 20, 2026, the company completed an initial public offering (IPO) of its stock on the New York Stock Exchange.