Tony Tamer

Tony Tamer is a business executive and the Founder and Co-CEO of H.I.G. Capital, a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with over $27 billion of equity capital under management. He previously held positions at Bain & Company, Hewlett-Packard, and Sprint Corporation.

Education

Tony Tamer holds an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School, and a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. His undergraduate degree is from Rutgers University.^[1]

Career

Tony Tamer began his career at Hewlett-Packard and later at Sprint Corporation in a variety of engineering, marketing and manufacturing positions.^[2] Tamer then joined Bain & Company in 1986 where he ultimately became a partner until he left the firm in 1993. At Bain, he developed business unit and operating strategies, implemented productivity improvement initiatives, and led acquisition and divestiture activities for a number of Fortune 500 clients.^[3]

In 1993 Tony Tamer co-founded H.I.G. Capital with Sami Mnaymneh. Together, Tamer and Mnaymneh have developed H.I.G. Capital into a global private equity firm with over $27 billion of equity capital under management.^[4] Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo , H.I.G. Capital specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/ value-added approach:^[5]

• H.I.G.’s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses.
• H.I.G.’s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance.^[6]
• H.I.G.’s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices.

Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion.^[7]

Personal life

Tamer is married and has four daughters. His wife Sandra holds a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Action Against Hunger, the RMF Foundation, the PAMM Museum, and the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia University.^[8]

In January 2015, Columbia University announced that Tamer and his wife Sandra made a transformative gift to establish and endow The Tamer Center for Social Enterprise, which expanded the existing Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School.^[9] The new funding allowed for the launch of a seed investment fund for social ventures, expansion of loan assistance and summer fellowship programs for social enterprise students, and development of the advisory network for Columbia’s social entrepreneurs.^[10]

Tamer currently serves on the Dean's Council of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and on the Dean's Council of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.^[11] He is a Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in NY (MoMA), a Trustee of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and a member of the Board of the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Tamer also serves on the advisory board of LIFE (Lebanese International Finance Executives) and on the board of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia University.^[12]

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