Alex Zykov
Transaction Director
Alex Zykov
Transaction Director
Suite 500
Tampa FL 33607
About
As a Transaction Director on Benchmark International’s Middle Market Team, Alex leads the execution of our clients’ transactions from onboarding through signing and closing. He oversees every aspect of the process for middle-market clients across the industrial, consumer, business services, healthcare, and technology sectors. He makes sure clients understand each step and feel confident along the way, supporting them and our team through due diligence, evaluating competing offers, and leading negotiations through to the finish line.
Alex’s career spans corporate development, executing transactions on Wall Street, and co-founding and running boutique advisory firms serving small and mid-sized businesses. Each step was deliberate: building the breadth of knowledge and experience needed to give his clients the best possible advice and help them achieve their goals. He discovered his passion for corporate finance at MIT, where he earned dual degrees in Economics and Management Science, and later earned his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
On a personal note, Alex was born in Moscow, Russia, and spent his childhood between Moscow and New Delhi, India, before moving to New York City, where he finished high school. Growing up across three very different cultures taught him to adapt quickly, listen carefully, and find common ground -- skills he draws on at every negotiating table.
Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - BS, Economics, Management Science
Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) - MBA
Experience
Alex has more than 15 years of investment banking and corporate development experience across multiple sectors, including more than two dozen M&A engagements and over $3 billion in closed transaction value. That experience has taught him how to run a disciplined process, anticipate issues before they surface, and resolve them when they do, so that our clients achieve the outcome they deserve.
Alex began his career in corporate development at New York Life, evaluating and executing acquisitions and strategic investments from the buyer’s side of the table. That perspective still shapes how he positions our clients’ businesses for acquirers today. He then moved into investment banking at Jefferies and Stephens, where he advised public and private companies on sell-sides, buy-sides and capital raises, and learned to run rigorous, competitive processes on large, complex transactions. He went on to co-found two boutique advisory firms, ARGO Capital Advisors and Sagittarius Group, where he advised founder-led and privately held businesses on sales, acquisitions, and financings, including independent sponsor transactions. Building those firms from the ground up taught him what it means to be a business owner -- understanding the risk, the sacrifice, and the weight of making decisions. Together, these experiences give Alex a buyer’s viewpoint, Wall Street execution discipline, and an owner’s perspective.
Passion
Every business has a story: years of work, risks taken, and employees and families who depend on it. Having built businesses of his own, Alex knows how personal the decision to sell can be, and how much trust it takes to hand that process to someone else. That trust is what he values most about his role. Working at Benchmark International gives him the platform, the team, and the process to honor it -- to protect what our clients have built, guide them through one of the most consequential decisions they will make, and stay in their corner until the deal is done. Helping an owner reach the outcome they've spent years working toward is the part of this job he cares about most.