Marsh Hawk Capital Management, LLC
Marsh Hawk Capital Management, LLC ("Marsh Hawk") is not a traditional private equity fund. It is a private investment partnership owned by ELB Capital Management, LLC ("ELB") and managed by Eric L. Blum and Joseph D. Kestenbaum, two seasoned private investors with extensive experience in investing and managing middle market companies across a wide array of industries from heavy manufacturing and value-add business services to real estate, alternative energy, and media.
Marsh Hawk has $250 million available for investment and is focused on control investments where its patient capital and deep operating experience can benefit growth companies in the lower and mid-tier middle market segments. In concert with ELB’s debt capital, Marsh Hawk and ELB together constitute a capability to provide one-stop shopping for quality transactions requiring speed and certainty of closing. In making control investments, Marsh Hawk places primary emphasis on operating partners and senior management of high reputation and established record. Our principal targets are entrepreneurs, family-owned businesses seeking total or partial liquidity and senior executives who have identified a target company and wish to make the transition to entrepreneurship but lack the necessary capital.
Unlike traditional private equity firms, Marsh Hawk believes in over "equitizing" transactions in the conviction that all middle market companies experience challenges at some point in their life cycle and that a strong balance sheet is a company’s best safeguard for surviving and thriving through both difficult macro economic cycles and challenges specific to each portfolio company. In all of its portfolio companies, Marsh Hawk plays an ongoing active role on the board, in the selection of senior management and through regular on-site monitoring.
Marsh Hawk is wholly owned by ELB Capital Management, LLC. ELB has invested more than $600 million in middle market companies since 2003 and currently manages a diverse portfolio of companies. ELB focuses on providing mid-tier capital. For more on ELB’s investing style, visit www.elbcap.com.
In addition to patient and substantial capital, Marsh Hawk and ELB together bring an important added advantage to potential portfolio companies: a straight forward uncomplicated process of investment selection, due diligence and decision making. Unlike many private equity firms, Marsh Hawk does not have investment committees. Messrs. Blum and Kestenbaum together make all final decisions on investments. Transactions can be closed in a little as 45 days.
Marsh Hawk and ELB have made individual investments ranging in size from $5 million to $200 million. Preferred size for equity investments is presently in the range of $5 million to $25 million, but we will consider larger investments when merited.