PE Movers & Shakers

Introduction Jesse Rogers, Altamont Capital Stefan Kaluzny, Sycamore Partners Mitchell Blutt, Consonance Capital Thomas Edelman and Ben Guill, White Deer Energy Frank Baker, Peter Berger and Jeffrey Hendren, Siris Capital Chris Iorillo, Steve Rossi and Eric Willis, CounterPoint Capital

Jesse Rogers' main reason to quit Golden Gate Capital, the San Francisco buyout house he and David Dominik had started a decade earlier, and form Altamont Capital Partners was to return to his favorite haunt, the middle market.

It was a reprise of history. Back in 2000, Dominik left Bain Capital LLC, a prominent Boston buyout house, to work on smaller buyouts after Bain shifted to megadeals. Rogers, his chief partner at Golden Gate, was a former executive of Bain & Co., the consultancy that hatched Bain Capital in 1984. For more than 10 years, the two forged an enviable record. But that success enabled Golden Gate to raise ever-larger funds, and as Golden Gate scaled up, Rogers yearned to dial back.

"We wanted to wind back the clock to the early days of Golden Gate," says Rogers, 54. "We like doing smaller deals. There are a lot more targets in that part of the market, and you have a great ability to impact companies of that size.

"And I think the returns are more attractive than doing larger deals."

So in May 2010, Rogers and former Golden Gate principals Randall Eason and Keoni Schwartz opened their shop in Palo Alto, Calif., near Rogers' home and about a mile from his alma mater, Stanford University. Casey Lynch, formerly of SFW Capital Partners LLC and Parthenon Capital Partners, joined as the fourth partner early this year.

They named themselves Altamont "as a little bit of a humorous poke at our partners back at Golden Gate."

The humor is geographical: The Golden Gate Bridge is the grand western gateway into San Francisco, while the highway into San Francisco from the east runs from the Central Valley, where Rogers grew up, in the town of Modesto, Calif., across the Altamont Pass. "They're opposites; Golden Gate is big, Altamont is small, that was the idea."

Rogers says relations between the firms remain "quite friendly." His and Dominik's "constructive" handling of his departure -- Dominik called each of Golden Gate's LPs to explain why "Jesse was going to do his own thing" -- was a big help in fundraising. Sixty percent of investors in Altamont's $500 million debut fund were Golden Gate LPs.

Altamont already has put 20% of the money into three buyouts, of specialty finance company Byrider Franchising Inc., upholstery supplier Robert Allen Group and insurance claims adjustor McLarens Young International.

All were turnaround plays or companies needing capital to see them through a transition -- "complicated opportunities," as Rogers labels them.

Bain Capital and Golden Gate built their early reputations by buying, reviving and building up such companies.

Altamont will seek to do the same. "Turmoil," says Rogers, "can create opportunities."