Golden Slacks A Private Advisory Firm

No. I  ·  New York  ·  MMXXVI

An advisory firm for capital that thinks in decades.

Golden Slacks is a private firm. We work with a small number of principals on capital structure, succession, and the calls that boards spend two years pretending they will not have to make. Our partners do not appear on television. Our analysts do not post. The clients who matter to us are the ones whose problems do not resolve in a single quarter.

Meet our Managing Director Read the 2026 Outlook

Member, FAUX. Not a registered broker‑dealer. Not a real bank. Not affiliated with Goldman Sachs in any jurisdiction, real or imagined.

Golden Slacks — gold trousers on a navy field
Est. in spirit 1869
§ I.

The firm.

We were founded, in spirit, in 1869. The actual paperwork is more recent. What has not changed is the kind of work we take. We advise on long‑duration capital. We do not run an investment management business. We do not underwrite. We do not sell research to the buy side. The firm is small on purpose and intends to remain so.

Our partners are not permitted to wear pleated khakis to the office before their fortieth birthday. This is the only frivolous rule we keep, and we keep it because the firm is, in the end, called Golden Slacks.

Engagements, last twelve months
11
Active clients
7
Average client tenure, years
9.4
Press inquiries returned, 2025
0
§ II.

Leadership.

Penny Lane, Managing Director
Penny Lane
Managing Director, Strategic Advisory
Joined the firm 2014 · Coverage: capital structure, succession, board

A note on Penny.

Penny Lane heads our Strategic Advisory practice. Before Golden Slacks she spent twelve years inside the office of the CFO at companies you have heard of and a few you have not. She is unusually willing to be the second voice in a meeting — the one that asks the question after the obvious one has already been answered.

Most of our work originates with her. Most of the work she declines for us originates with her too. Both are part of the job.

"The deal is fine. The cap table is the problem. It has been the problem since 2019. We are going to fix it now."

— attributed, in a meeting that did not happen
§ III.

What we do.

Five areas of work. Every engagement begins with a question about capital and ends with a question about who is around the table when the answer becomes a decision.

  1. 01

    Strategic Advisory

    The judgment calls behind capital structure, M&A timing, succession, and the rare boardroom conversation that only one person in the room is allowed to start. Led by Penny Lane.

  2. 02

    Capital Structure

    Convertible mezzanine sleeves, secondary structuring, and the kind of paper that lawyers write footnotes about for sport.

  3. 03

    Family Office Coverage

    Multi‑generational allocation, governance, and the unglamorous work of moving capital from the people who made it to the people who will spend it.

  4. 04

    Sovereign Coverage

    We cover three sovereigns. We will not say which. They know who they are.

  5. 05

    Restructuring

    For when the company is fundamentally fine and the founder is wearing cargo shorts to the board meeting. Quiet, fast, off‑press.

§ IV.

The 2026 Outlook.

A short letter goes to clients each January. We publish the table of contents because the letter itself does not leave the room.

  1. I.

    The Cost of Capital, Revisited

    A six‑page reassessment of where the discount rate actually sits in 2026, and why most of the models you saw last year were quoting a number from 2022.

    6 pp.
  2. II.

    Family Office Allocation, 2023–2025

    What we observed across our coverage book over the last twenty‑four months. The shift away from venture is real, but it is not what the press is calling it.

    4 pp.
  3. III.

    The CFO Track, Reconsidered

    A quiet reassessment of how senior FP&A talent is actually trained inside the firms we work with. We cite SimCFO twice. We name no names.

    9 pp.
  4. IV.

    Footnotes

    If you read only the bullet points, you are not the audience for this letter, and that is fine.

    2 pp.
Distribution By car. By hand. Read aloud at 7am, in person, by request.
§ V.

Our friends at SimCFO.

The bank is a joke. The calls are not.

Golden Slacks is a fictional firm. The decisions Penny Lane pretends to advise on are not. SimCFO is where senior FP&A analysts, new CFOs, and people on the CFO track sit with the actual judgment calls — capital allocation, cost structure, the conversations with the board — and practice making them before those calls start costing something real.

It is the only thing on this site that is not a bit. If you liked the version of Penny we put on the page, you will probably get something out of an evening with SimCFO.

Try SimCFO Subscribe at CFO Secrets
§ VI.

Contact.

Engagements

We take on a small number of new mandates each year and do not solicit. If you are reading this and we already know each other, the address book entry has not changed.

Press

We did not return any press inquiries in 2025. We expect to keep that record in 2026. If you must, write to support@sim-cfo.com and someone will read it eventually.

Careers

We are not hiring. Analysts are recruited through a process we do not describe in public. If you are the right candidate, we have already met.

The next letter, eventually.

We do not run a list.