Latimer: Bridge Investments has a similar culture to Stonegate and one thing I've learned over the years is that complete and total alignment with your equity investors is crucial to building a great business. To begin with, Bridge Investments is in the northern suburbs of Chicago and is a family office and an aggregator of capital. They have their own money but they also aggregate local, sophisticated and very smart money. As investors, they are patient and seek to be aligned with management.
Bridge’s founding partner, Bob Goldberg, is a member of the family that founded Goldberg Kohn. The firm has been in the commercial finance and ABL space for some 50 years. I knew that they could provide the right amount of capital to help us scale the business. Since Bridge Investments isn’t a private equity firm, it doesn’t have a real window on its investments; but they do want to be helpful while at the same time, not overly involved in the day-to-day operations.
As for our board, each member is a smart investor who understands the cyclical nature of the business. The board has assigned Pete Schwab to assist us in managing the cycle of change, the capital and the strategy. Pete is a very active board member and investor. Daniel Goldberg with Bridge Investments is a 20-year investor who understands both the cycles of investing and the financial services space as well.
I’m on the board as are Buzz Ruttenberg, a well-known and very successful local real estate investor who wanted an opportunity to invest in the business, and Jason Thomas, a principal at Bridge Investments.
ABL Advisor: Tell us about the team you’ve assembled at Stonegate Capital.
Latimer: Right now, the team is made up of four people. I’m the CEO and Tim Gottfried is our chief operating officer. Tim has a deep investment banking and credit background and most recently, he was at Cerberus Capital Management. He serves as our CFO as well.
Our head of underwriting, Tony Cappell, is a very smart lender and I have to tell you, this was a tricky position to fill. We were looking for someone who was aligned with our new strategy but who also had on-the-ground, roll-up-your-sleeves liquidation experience. Tony began as a collateral auditor at Wells Fargo Foothill/Wells Fargo Capital Finance. We hired him at Gibraltar to be an underwriter at the age of 28. He did spend time at First Midwest to pursue his business degree and his experience there turned out to be critical. Tony has collateral lending experience, underwriting skills he gained at Gibraltar and has worked in a regulated bank lending environment … through all of this, Tony really understands how to lend money.
We also are very fortunate to have Andrea Hedrick on our team. Andrea was a sales person I hired at Foothill Capital back in 2005. Andrea has covered private equity sponsors over the last ten years and she’s now with us to help build originations. She is energetic, smart and really embraces our culture.
That’s the team today, but I can’t promise you that there won’t be more of us as we grow. But our growth has to be measured, algorithmic and formulaic. As we meet our goals by adding loans, adding senior capital and scaling our business, we’ll add the right people who believe in our culture and strategy. For now, this team is excited to execute our long-term and patient strategy by making smart first-lien, opportunistic loans to sophisticated borrowers.
ABL Advisor: You’ve alluded to your culture more than once. Can you say more about what makes Stonegate's culture unique?
Latimer: As I’ve told the people who have joined us, you’ve got to hit Sunday night looking forward to Monday morning because if you don’t want to do it, you won’t do it well. Everyone on the team is excited to be a part of it. That’s our culture … that’s our strategy.