“The conference is a little more like a traditional public markets investment banking conference,” explained John Mack III, CEO of USBX Advisory Services LLC, Santa Monica, Calif., which sponsored the event. “Public companies present to a cross-section of investors.

“The goal is to talk more about what you’re doing, strategic opportunities, where the market is going as opposed to doing a strictly financial presentation,” he emphasized.

Each CEO does a 20-minute presentation with approximately 20 slides and then has 10 minutes to answer questions. Three presentations are scheduled concurrently. The CEOs are available in separate break-out rooms after their presentations.

Those attending the conference include CEOs and top-level executives from the presenting companies themselves, public and private investors, and heads of business development for major security companies and suppliers.

Keynote speakers included Charles McQueary, the undersecretary for science and technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Robert Grady, a managing partner of Carlyle Venture Partners.

“Cynthia Conlon, the head of corporate security for Rand Corp., talked about security trends in their facilities and the design of a sophisticated system for their corporate headquarters,” Mack reported. “I gave an update on the security industry’s overall trends in mergers and acquisitions and capital markets.”

Also hosting the event was Lessing Gold, SDM’s legal columnist and a partner in the law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp.

“We thought there was a dearth of professional investment banking services focused on the physical security industry,” explained Mack about the origin of the conference, which was started three years ago.

“You had small business brokers to broker transactions, or you had very large companies look at doing some work in the industry, but they really couldn’t focus on mid-market companies,” Mack recalled. “We feel good about building a strong franchise in a sector that was underserved.”