The Small Business Investor Alliance (SBIA) and the National Center for the Middle Market (NCMM) announced plans to partner in 2014, releasing new data and insights specifically focused on lower middle market business confidence levels.

Anil Makhija, academic director for NCMM, will unveil new lower middle- market data at SBIA’s Northeast Private Equity Conference on January 22 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City. SBIA will later publish a newsletter with further analysis and insights from the lower middle-market investment community on the survey’s findings in February 2014. As part of the newsletter, SBIA and NCMM will release a new, co-branded index of small business confidence.

“The NCMM is the authority when it comes to information and knowledge on middle-market businesses in the U.S. and our collaboration with them to promote lower middle market data and insights is a natural fit,” said Brett Palmer, president of SBIA. “We believe our private equity funds will greatly benefit from access to this high-caliber research and we are excited to have NCMM’s participation as we kick-off one of our key annual events.”

“The NCMM and SBIA share common goals of driving growth, increasing competitiveness and creating jobs for the U.S. economy,” said Anil Makhija, academic director for NCMM. “The investment community has long been a key audience for NCMM’s data and reports. We are thrilled to partner with SBIA to reveal some interesting trends in terms of the state of mind for many management teams of small and mid-sized businesses. I look forward to analyzing those sentiments with SBIA and its members.”