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How does Lexington define the term 'lower' middle market?

The term "middle market" is widely used in the corporate finance community, but its definition differs greatly among market constituents. In the leveraged loan market, Standard & Poor's Leveraged Commentary & Data (LCD) classifies middle market deals as those involving borrowers with less than $50 million of EBITDA. However, definitions vary, for instance, Barlow Research suggests that the range is $10 to $500 million in sales. Others use deal sizes of less than $500 million as the cut-off, but further characterizes deals sized at $100 million or less as "traditional middle market," and those between $100 and $500 million as "large middle market."  Other simplified definitions based on sales revenues include upper middle market firms having revenues from $500 million - $1 billion, middle market firms having revenues of $251m - $499m and lower middle market firms having revenues of $10-250m.

Typically, the middle market or mid-market refers to companies of between $10 and $500 million in sales. At Lexington, we reference the Barlow Research definition and as such, we define the "lower middle market" as companies whose revenues fall in the $20 to $249 million range and the 'mid-market' as companies whose revenues fall in the $250 to $500 million range. Lexington is a lower and middle-market investment bank.