Star Mountain Capital, a New York-based, employee-owned, specialized private credit and secondaries investment manager with approximately $4 billion in assets under management, officially opened its Tampa office, in December.
Located at 101 E. Kennedy Blvd., Suite 3350, in the Bank of America building, the office is home to the staff of about 30 people, with room to grow. As Star Mountain continues to recruit and add to its team, Brett Hickey, founder and chief executive officer of Star Mountain, says Tampa Bay had a lot that attracted him to this market, including the talent pool.
“What made us interested in opening up an office in Tampa Bay was talent,” says Hickey. “Primarily, we are focused on developing talent – diverse talent – and we believe that Tampa provides an environment that is consistent with our culture, and values, which include health and wellness.”
He adds that the high quality of life for employees and low commute times also were perks to opening a Tampa office.
“We also view Tampa as an easy commute from New York and we have many portfolio companies, that we are invested with, and investors in the Tampa and Southern Florida region,” he says, adding that Tampa International Airport makes traveling for the business a breeze.
It’s also an exciting time for Star Mountain, as it has recently closed on an oversubscribed fund, indicating client interest for the growing company and its business offerings.
“The fact that we were able to have an oversubscribed fund, in a tough environment, is very valuable and we believe this will enable us to create incremental value for our investors and the community,” Hickey explains. “Right now, we have an aging demographic, and there are a lot of businesses in America that are owned by founders, owners and operators, who struggle to access capital as the banks have retracted from small businesses.”
The momentum signals promise moving into the new year.
“It assists with the overall momentum that helps us to attract, and retain, talent. If you think about attracting, and retaining, the best talent, people are looking for growing organizations for their careers and it becomes a little bit of a virtuous circle. Having capital, attracting high quality companies to invest in generating returns, attracting high quality employees, motivating them and aligning interests, again, helps drive returns,” Hickey says.
With 100 percent profit-sharing, when Star Mountain is succeeding, so does its employees.
“It enables us to be very attractive to people who want to work for an employee-owned business and have the opportunity to be economically aligned, given 100 percent profit sharing. Not having to deal with the small business risk, and knowing that they can work for a stable, growing, family-oriented type of business is quite compelling and has been very well received in the Tampa market,” Hickey says.
In addition to Star Mountain’s private lending and equity lines of business, it also has a secondaries business.
“If there are institutions, or individuals, that are invested in private companies, or invested in other private equity or private credit funds, and they are looking for early liquidity, we have a business that can buy those illiquid assets from them to provide them with early liquidity,” Hickey explains. “We believe Star Mountain has a competitive advantage in the market. In addition to the size of our team, the amount of data, information and resources we have, materially, expands our ecosystem. As a limited partner investor through that business and about 60 other private equity and private credit funds, we have access to a truly differentiated set of information. For a business owner who’s coming to us looking for capital, we look at our funds to see if we can help support them and if there’s a fit.”
*Assets under management as of 1/16/24, including committed debt facilities.