Partners

Leading advisor in private markets M&A for more than 25 years

With a strategic focus on private markets, Ted is a pioneer and continued leader advising private equity firms, credit managers, real estate and infrastructure managers, along with the institutional investors, insurance companies, and large foreign institutions seeking to invest in and acquire these firms.

Bio and Market History*

Ted has focused most of his career advising private market investment firms. He pioneered, built and led a private markets M&A advisory practice at his predecessor firm into a global leader completing strategic partnerships that have profoundly shaped the industry.  In the early days, as private equity firms went public, Apollo, Bain, Carlyle, and Fortress were frequent counter-parties to many of his credit manager client deals, eventually counting more than 50 completed transactions the sector.  In the years since, he broadened the strategic dialogue with acquirors to insurance companies, traditional investment companies, institutional investors and foreign institutions.

The past ten years, as the real estate sector accelerated its consolidation, Ted worked on a substantial market share of industry deals to achieve successful outcomes.  Drawing on the years of buyer engagement from the credit sector, he drove innovative partnerships in the real estate ranging from CIM’s minority relationship with Mitsui & Co. to Exeter Property’s sale to EQT, with many strategic and GP stake deals in between.

With the rise of GP stake investing, Ted collaborated with clients and GP investors-alike to form innovative equity and non-dilutive financings, notably a three investor deal for Clearlake Capital with Dyal, Goldman and Landmark; then with an industry leading Asian private equity firm with Dyal; and in a quintessential middle-market deal, Trivest with Bonaccord, and completing successful transactions with most other dedicated GP stake investment firms (several remain undisclosed), building an industry leading track record in this specialized area.

While strategic M&A activity in the infrastructure sector is still growing, Ted’s global buy-side search advisory with private equity firms, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds, and recent advisory of Investcorp in its acquisition of Corsair’s infrastructure business highlight coverage in this sector at its early stages of consolidation.

After completing a series of strategic minority insurance company investments with private credit managers, Ted continued his longstanding work with insurance companies, most recently culminating in two groundbreaking sector transactions advising Guardian Life.  First, driving Guardian’s buy-side search process leading to a minority stake / LP capital contribution with HPS, then subsequently as the parties agreed to expand their strategic partnership by shifting the investment management of approximately $30bn of assets to HPS, commit $5bn in new investment grade credit, and receive an additional minority stake in the company.  He remains highly active in the broader march to convergence of insurance companies with yield-oriented private markets managers remains a particularly important theme.

Following his MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, Ted worked as an Associate for Kearney, a global consulting firm advising on large-scale financial services acquisitions globally in the consolidating period from 1997-99.

Ted hails from the Twin Cities and proudly graduated from the University of Minnesota.  His dad, late mom, sister and three children are most dear to him in life.  He enjoys ice hockey, hiking, training, antiquity, and friends all over the world.