From Bloomberg via Crain's Chicago Business, August 6:
The 62-year-old founder of BDT Capital
Partners and former Goldman Sachs executive is as wealthy as some of his
better-known clients.
Byron Trott, consigliere to some of the world’s wealthiest families, doesn’t like being called the billionaires’ banker.
How does billionaire banker sound?
The 62-year-old founder of BDT Capital
Partners has quietly amassed a $3.6 billion fortune, according to the
Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
executive as wealthy as some of his better-known clients.
Born in a small town in
Missouri, the son of a telephone-line repairman and dress-shop owner,
Trott laid the foundations by initially advising some of the world’s
most successful investors, especially Buffett, during an almost
three-decade run at Goldman Sachs. Since leaving in 2009, he started his
own Chicago-based advisory and private equity firm, where assets have
rapidly swelled to $28 billion.
One of his firm’s first
investments, Weber Inc., went public this week. While BDT is the
grill-maker’s majority owner, Trott and his family personally own a 5%
stake worth $240 million, according to a regulatory filing. Weber was a
typical BDT investment: family-owned and often founder-led. Other
investments include Whataburger Restaurants, Cox Automotive, Casa
Dragones Tequila and German car parts manufacturer Schaeffler AG.
BDT’s
model—pitching advice and investing its own capital—is in many ways a
throwback to old-world merchant banks. It’s also one that can be
phenomenally lucrative for the founders....
....MUCH MORE
